Settling In: Ups and Downs, Hugelkultur and Clotheslines

Salinger and I have been here, in our Wholehearted House in The Crooked Wood, for a little more than a week, but it feels like longer. Partly because a lot has been packed into each day and partly because this place fits us like a favourite, well-worn sweater.

This time has felt very full and rich. With lots of rainy and overcast weather right off the bat, we have been alternately calm and cosy, blue and snoozy, chilly and shivery and brisk and busy.

Infrastructure is definitely a challenge. With no way to charge my computers and plenty of desk work to do, I am forced off the property periodically. It's probably good for me to have a reason to see people, because otherwise I think I would be a total recluse. I am not feeling very social these days.

The other day, as I was trying to do a piece of work, I watched my laptop battery count down: 4%, 3%, 2% (your computer will shut down soon if you don't connect it to a power supply), 1% – as I desperately copied the files I needed off onto a stick and transferred them over to my other laptop, which still had about 50% of its battery remaining.

I'm managing, but I am also trying to figure out an alternate power solution and/or office space. When I lived without electricity two summers ago, I had an external office in a neighbouring home, but this time around, I haven't succeeded in finding a similar situation. Fortunately, my new place is only a 15-minute drive to Bridgewater and I am enjoying the benefits of part-time membership at co3 – a pretty groovy little spot.

The Big Ups

I am actually relaxed. It is quiet and peaceful here. Well, "nature quiet", which is to say that there are tons of song birds in the canopy of trees and plenty of peepers at night.

I feel at home here. I feel like I belong in these woods.

I have been receiving a lot of help from a lot of people.

And, I have very nice neighbours.

The Big Downs

There have been a couple of struggles, for sure. I hit a snag with my building permit for my shed (the shed to which NSPower is going to eventually connect electricity) last week when it was pointed out to me that I had not fulfilled a prerequisite: acquiring permission from the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal for permission to build a structure within 100 metres of the centre of the road. Fortunately, the DOT was super-awesome, processed the request in 4 days and went out of their way to provide me with a scanned copy that I could quickly send to the municipality (because for some reason, they wouldn't accept photographs of the hardcopy that I took in my car – LOL).

My other big down happened when Salinger took off for almost 24 hours last week, which had me doubled over with worry. I was afraid he had been eaten by coy-wolves or set upon by a gang of savage neighbourhood cats. But he was just off exploring and came back, hungry, uninjured and unrepentant, all in his own good time. I am very grateful to my Facebook community for helping me stay calmer during his absence. Damn, but I'm attached to the little fella.

Hugelkultur

On Friday, a friend for whom I did some design work this past winter came to return the favour by sharing his expertise with me. He is a gardening guru and together we set up my first (and I'm thinking, not my last) hugelkultur raised bed. Hugelkultur is a permaculture technique, involving making mounds out of rotting wood (abundantly available here). We also used seaweed, peat moss, dirt, dead leaves, twigs and a few soil additions like lime, wood ash and rock phosphate.

Hugelkultur: basically a big pile of organic
matter – rotting logs at the bottom, then
twigs, brush with seaweed and dead leaves
to fill in the cracks...

And soil on the top. All of it later mulched
with seaweed.

I'm very excited about my hugelkultur bed! And I also have another raised bed that my sweet folks gave me as a land-warming present last Saturday. So far I have planted blue potatoes (in seaweed), onions, peas, beans and spinach. Now I just have to find more of the seeds I bought last year and never planted...

The Clothesline

I don't know what it is about clotheslines, but to me they feel like home. Home is where you can have a clothesline. I haven't had a clothesline in a long time. Probably 15 years. Apartments often don't have them. By chance, the houses I have rented in have not had them. Stretching freshly washed clothes out over a fire escape is just not the same.

It has been one of my highest wishlist items for my own place. Shortly after moving to The Crooked Wood, I found myself at Gow's Home Hardware buying a pitchfork, some electrical tape, a big, purple, plastic laundry basket and a clothesline kit. And some clothespins.

On Saturday, I did a huge load of wash at the Bridgewater laundromat (When I have a back-log of three+ loads, I like to take them to the BIG MACHINE where the wash can be all done and dusted in 20 minutes). I came home committed to install my clothesline all by myself. And I did! It took me three tries, plagued by blackflies, struggling with the technical aspects of the task – I found it difficult driving in the screw hooks, working over my head, on tip-toes. The clothesline itself got super-tangled right away. (I blame this on being left-handed in a right-handed world. Cables, wires, extension cords – they are all wound up with right-handed people in mind.) Twice I gave up and ran from the bugs. But I kept going back out and by the end of my third foray, I had installed my clothesline. It's a little low (I'm short and don't yet own a ladder) – and I feel fairly certain that some people will snicker at it when they see it – but it runs smoothly and it works! I dried my clothes on it today and they smell amazing. (It has been a long-held aspiration of mine to have sheets that smell as amazing as my mom's and I think I've achieved my goal!)

My beloved clothesline – the quintessence of "Home".

I am not handy. But I hate feeling helpless. I am happy to outsource a lot of tasks, but I also like to know that I can take care of something like this when I want or need to. I feel a sense of accomplishment from doing something that I am not innately good at – something that was difficult and frustrating – and which, now done, will add greatly to the quality of my life. 

Spring cleaning nostalgia

For many years of my life, my Nana opening up her cottage was an important annual event. Whether I was two thousand kilometres away and reading about it in her letters, or at ground zero helping to sweep up dead flies, the opening of the cottage felt like a part of my life.

This year, as I clean up my house which has been shut up for the winter, my thoughts turn to my Nana. I wish that I could still pop down the road for a cup of tea, a hand of cards and a chat. 

How happy she would be to hear that there are no signs of incursions by mice with their dreaded Hanta virus. How I know she would tell the tale of when they were children and there was a bounty on flies - they were given, I believe, a penny for every hundred fly carcasses (really? Did my great-grandparents actually count them?).

I love that I carry these memories and my Nana's presence in my heart. And at the same time, I can't help but wish she were still here in person to share in moments like these.

Here's to you, Nana! Indomitable champion of spring cleaning, fly killer and indefatigable cheerer-onner.

I miss you. 

The epic move

Well, we are here. Salinger and I.

I've just had four very intense days. Thursday was spent packing, Friday moving the house (eeeeeee!), yesterday trying to organize Wholehearted House and Sunday cleaning my winter apartment and moving Salinger.

Salinger is NOT a fan of moving. He hates driving in the car. But after we got to the ferry I think he figured out that we weren't going to see the vet and he seemed to calm down a bit. After an initial prowl around the chaos in our tiny home, he settled in for a long nap on the bed by my feet.

I kicked back, eyes half-closed, bone bone bone tired. Not a lot more got done yesterday before the fading of the light. I had already put in a full day, scrubbing and packing and wrestling Salinger into his carrier.

I don't have electricity to hook up to my little rig. That is next on the agenda, but I will be roughing it for a number of weeks, if not months. Fortunately, the days are long, so I will have plenty of time to work in daylight. And the dark early mornings are good for thinking, resting and working on the computer (as long as I can figure out ways to keep it charged – I'm working on that).

On the downside, the weather forecast is cloudy and rainy for the next FIVE days. Salinger and I seem to have a knack for moving to this house at the beginning of a long stretches of rain. This will make two out of three years. The first year in March, this year in May (if you'd like, you can listen to a song I wrote about that first rainy/snowy/sleety March here). 

But on the upside, at least it's pretty warm (I slept very comfortably last night) and I'm hopeful that the wet weather will make for some calm and quiet days that I can spend organizing the interior of the house and getting some desk work done.

This morning, Salinger is outside checking out our (new-to-him) land. It's raining pretty heavily. I think he is mostly hanging out under the house, mewing at the door periodically to make sure that I am here and will let him in upon request.

Here is the story of the move:

I decided to rent a U-haul to accommodate some of my stuff.
I wasn't sure how much weight we should try to move
inside the house. And also, it was just hard to maneuver in
my house with 100% of the contents inside it. Everything
became a lot easier once a lot of my stuff was stogged into the van.

The evening sky at Pennybrook. There was a fair bit of nostalgia and
melancholy involved in this move. I felt sad to leave both
Pennybrook and my winter accommodations.

I made a rope corral to keep most of the
contents that we moved inside the house from
shifting around and to keep the weight
over the wheels, as helpfully advised
in an email from Wholehearted House's maker, Adam.
My friend Katy, who helped me pack, was interested
in seeing before and after photos to see how much things
 moved when we hauled the house.

I hope the grass will spring back quickly
at Pennybrook in the spot where
my house and deck sat for two years.

I was going to have my house moved by a local towing company (Adam, sadly, has moved out west, so it was not possible for him to move it). I was feeling pretty anxious about it, and the thought of working with strangers was stressing me out even more.

A couple of days before the move was scheduled, I was talking with my friend who's cut down all of the trees on my land and telling him about feeling stressed. And he instantly offered to move my house for me.

"What!" I exclaimed. "You can do that?"

"Of course I can."

I don't know why it had never occurred to me to ask. I knew he had a big truck and mad skillz.

Anyway, he was amazing. Simply stellar. Every curve and bump was managed with aplomb. And, we took our time; he was totally patient with my anxiety and my lack of experience helping to move very large objects up and down narrow driveways. My Pennybrook landmates were also extremely helpful, especially Jude, who provided both practical and moral support on many fronts.

The bottle jack, hoisting the house off her blocks
and back onto her wheels. (We also moved this
mattress abandoned by another temporary Pennybrook
resident down on to the pile awaiting Big Garbage pick-up).

Heading down the driveway at Pennybrook.
Pretty much the same journey in reverse to the
one I described when we moved my house up to Pennybrook,
with the exception that we didn't have to manage
the curve on the lower part of the driveway because
the neighbours kindly gave me permission to
travel out on their straighter driveway – the connection
between the two driveways is normally blocked off
and I didn't know when we moved in that the barrier
is removable!

Backing up the driveway into The Crooked Wood.

The "after" shot for my friend Katy. Not much
moved except for the things I had forgot to put
down as low as possible.

After some preliminary organizing on Saturday.
In a typical case of two steps forward and one
step back, it now looks way worse than this because
of all the things I've added from my winter
apartment. Sigh.

Salinger, king of the chaos around him.

So, we are here, Salinger and I. There are plenty of blankets on the bed. The propane stove works, so there is tea and soup and fried or baked potatoes any time I want them.

I don't have electricity or refrigeration or running water. I feel like I could sleep through most of the next five days, avoiding the rain and recovering from the move and from the huge amounts of work I did this winter.

It is so quiet here. There are only the sounds of the birds and squirrels, the rain and VERY occasional passing cars.

My to-do list is long. Desk work is unrelenting. And I have so many things to do for the continued development of The Crooked Wood. But that's another blog post.

For now, it is enough to sit with the major accomplishment of having gotten this baby moved and settled here in her (hopefully) permanent home.

Wholehearted House is in The Crooked Wood

After an amazingly epic day yesterday, my home has been relocated!

Still tons to do, so no time for a lengthy post (inevitable as that is) but here is a photo of her in her new situation! 

Moving

They say moving is ranked among the top three most stressful events in life – right up there with changing jobs and losing a loved one through death or heartbreak.

I believe it.

I hate moving. I'm happy to help other people move, but I hate moving myself.

There has been a lot of moving in my life over the past 6 years. I've really pared down my belongings, but I still have way too much stuff in way too many locations and in far too much disorder.

I'm moving this week. It feels overwhelming and complicated. It involves a lot of anxiety and a lot of work.

Last night, I had a dream that I was – you guessed it – moving.

On one side of the narrow road that I had to travel with my things, there was a rock face and on the other side, a steep drop. And, if that wasn't scary enough, there was a dragon who was angry with me for having stolen a beautiful gemstone (yes, I did read The Hobbit compulsively as a child).

In my dream, two of my wonderful friends were helping me me move. (Lucky for me, in real life, several more of my dear friends have volunteered to help me move). We did the first load very quietly without waking the dragon. Then I told them that I just couldn't bear the risk of them doing the second load. I didn't want anything bad to happen to them. So I went back alone, as quietly as possible, to get the rest of my stuff.

I can't remember how the dream ended.

But, I'm pretty sure I got busted by the dragon as I sneaked back with the second load. And ended up as ashes and dust. (Which might be my subconscious mind telling me that I should just light all of my belongings on fire and start fresh).

So, here's to moving: anxiety and terror met (in my dream at least) with courage, love — and inevitable, sickening disaster.

Wish me luck.

Names and Naming (A Tiny Home/Land Development Report)

As I write this, it is exactly one year since I became the official steward of my land.

I am planning to move my tiny home there soon and I am facing the incredible stress of that process. There is almost nothing I find harder than moving. And in this I am not alone. Moving, losing a loved one (to death or heartbreak) and starting a new job are frequently cited as the three things human beings find most stressful.

But that is not what I want to write about today. No, today is a day for celebration! I have accomplished a great deal in one year. I have shaped my land, thought about my site, assisted in the cutting down of many trees, moved wood and brush and had a driveway excavated. I have gathered the materials I need to start a garden and have gotten a quote on a shed to hook power up to.

Many tasks lie ahead, too. Oh, I keep coming back to that don't I? I am feeling a little daunted these days, I admit.

But, that is not what I want to write about today!

A friend of mine, who is a writer and a storyteller, wrote to me in response to my last blog post, asking me why I had not yet given my land a name.

I responded that I had, but that I had not yet started using the name on my blog. I promised the big reveal would come very soon.

So, here's the story:

There is a quote attributed to Tom Waits that goes like this:

My kids are starting to notice I'm a little different from the other dads. "Why don't you have a straight job like everyone else?" they asked me the other day. I told them this story: In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, "Look at me...I'm tall, and I'm straight, and I'm handsome. Look at you...you're all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you." And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, "Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest." So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day. (If you're in the mood for more unsourced Tom Waits quotes, click here.)

On my three acre plot, there are five magnificent, twisty old pine trees. Two people have to collaborate to give each of these trees a hug. (Three of them I have named Orwen, Orduu and Orgoch, after the fates from the Chronicles of Prydain. Two of them are currently unnamed.)

One of my twisted sisters;
I believe this is a photo of Orduu.

And there is one splendid twisty old maple, whom an 8-year-old friend of mine has dubbed Father Maple.

Father Maple

So, we are namers – me, my friends and my family – and humans in general, for that matter.

I believe human beings name things to help fix their meanings. When I studied psychotherapy back a bunch of years ago, we often used the word hermeneutics to refer to the process of creating meaning through interpretation of the things we read and, by extension, from our feelings and experiences.

So, in honour of a (very possibly, totally fake) "Tom Waits" quote along with the proven truth of how crooked trees survive loggers and the meaning that I interpret from that truth, I have named my land The Crooked Wood.

My Wholehearted House in The Crooked Wood (very soon, I hope!).

I hope my house will always remind me to live life with my whole heart and that the woods will always remind me to honour myself for who I am: unique, somewhat screwed up and absolutely unchoppable.

(This post is most especially for you, Frank! Thanks for asking!)