A walk down to Beaver Town

With the arrival of fall, it's getting a bit brisk here in the Crooked Wood. Since moving Wholehearted House this spring, I have not set the woodstove back up or unwrapped the chimney that was covered in plastic and tuck tape a year ago. Although cooking on the propane stove is a source of warmth, it isn't very efficient to use it to try to heat my whole house.

I'll be moving to my winter accommodations soon, but I'm loathe to leave the peace and quiet of this place (even though I know my winter housemate and I have lots of good times ahead – many wonderful meals, cribbage games and conversations).

Still, for a couple more weeks, I'm toughing out the chilly nights and treasuring my solitude. In the battle against the chill, I have many tools: hot tea and soup, blankets, my beloved slanket, hoodies, layering, long underwear, hats, car drives with the heater going full blast, visits to the homes of friends and family, warm public refuges like the library and movie theatre, hot flashes and most effective of all, exercise.

Today, I knew I needed to get my blood moving and decided to go for a walk, ostensibly to look for mushrooms, even though the weather has been so dry that I knew the chance of finding any was probably nil (and I was right about that).

Even though I've lived here all summer, I haven't explored my land very thoroughly. For the most part, I stick to the area bounded by my house, garden, shed, clothesline and compost heap.

Here is a photo of the edge of the clearing made on my land. Most of my land looks like this: tall trees, with lots of standing and fallen dead wood.

Today, I decided to set out to explore the less traveled parts of my land. It's only three acres (which is about the size of three professional soccer fields), so I figured it wouldn't take very long. Salinger decided he would come with me.

Salinger, showing off his tree-climbing skills on our walk today.

The Crooked Wood is roughly rectangular. It has about 150 feet that front the road and then goes back about three times that distance with (more or less) straight sides. The line at the back of my property is a jagged line, because that boundary is created by a little stream called the Kissing Brook (also known as the Line Brook to the less lyrical.)

The Kissing Brook at the end of a long, dry summer.

I hadn't been right up to the edge of the brook before today because in usual conditions, there is a large area of swampy wetland surrounding the brook itself: the sort of boot-swallowing expanse of stinky mud that is very difficult to navigate. In fact, before today, I thought the swamp was the brook. But with the very dry weather we've had this summer, the swamp is much easier to maneuver, so I was able to explore the whole area and discover that the brook has a distinct shape, separate from the swamp around it.

Obviously, the land around the brook didn't used to be swampy; the trees that grew on its banks haven't survived the wetter conditions and are mostly standing dead.

I had heard from my neighbours that there are beavers living in the Kissing Brook, and indeed, there were signs of them everywhere. Salinger was unusually vocal around the beaver dam – as if he was trying to make sure I was aware of the proximity of some very large rodents. I wonder if he has had nocturnal run-ins with them?

Busy beavers!

Interrupted half-way through the task?

What did you use to cut that down with – a beaver?

Home sweet beaver home

The back of the main dam is on the right in this photo. There is a very orderly pile of sticks on the left. Is it the beaver equivalent of a lumber yard?

The main dam can be seen from my land, but it is actually located slightly past my property line on land belonging to of one of my neighbours.

Uprooted trees decorate the banks of the brook

Fallen trees make handy shortcuts for Salinger

I had to laugh at myself – I got disoriented on three separate occasions during my walk. Because of the steep slope that drops down to the swamp, my home and those of my neighbours are not visible from the brook. With only the winding water as a reference point, I was trying to cross my land from side to side but twice I got turned around and ended up back at the same property line from which I had started! Finally, I walked back up into the inhabited portion of my land and crossed to the other property line, then walked down it and traveled from that side over to the other.

The third time I got disoriented was when I saw this marker – I thought it was the property line, but it's not. I can't think what it marks, it seems completely random...

The vegetation by the brook is very different than in the wooded portion of my land. Under the tall trees there are mosses, ferns and lichens as well as many of the sweet, little, woodland flowers that I love. Since the trees by the brook are dead or dying, there is a lot more sunshine down there and the plants are mostly grasses, reeds and burrs. Here is a photo of some asters (which always remind me of my Nana <3) – as well as some very thirsty grass.

I learned many things on my walk today. My land goes back further than I thought and there is a variety to it that I hadn't examined before. And while I didn't meet any of my beaver neighbours, I did get a sense of their habitat – and their industry. Apart from the occasional mushroom hunt, I plan to leave them alone to beaver away at their lives in peace.

After today, I feel motivated to become more familiar with this piece of land. I want to be able to recognize every inch and have landmarks that will tell me where I am at all times. I want to see it change through the seasons and the years ahead. I predict that there will be many more walks through The Crooked Wood.

Turning the corner

It was forecast to go down to 8 degrees Celsius last night. And judging from the temperature this morning, I believe it did.

But, I stayed comfortable despite my lack of a heat source. Last night, I gathered all of the blankets that I had taken off my bed about 6 weeks ago and spread them back on top. I closed all of the windows - except for Salinger's back door - and all of the skylights.

There was something very cozy about cuddling back under all of my blankets last night. And something even cozier about waking up this morning and staying in bed for a bit before getting up to make a hot cup of tea to drink in the brisk morning air. There is so much love and safety, as well as warmth, stored up in these blankets.

Left to right: "Nana's Ocean" (the quilt I completed for my grandmother in 2001), the quilt made for me by the mom of my best friend in grade 8, and "My Favourite Mistakes" (the first bed-sized quilt I ever completed, started in 1998 and completed in 2000). 

The forecast says it's going to go back to being 17 overnight for most of the next 10 days. So this was only a forerunner. But, along with the ever-shortening days, it's a warning that my time here for this summer is drawing to a close.

That's a melancholy feeling. My sweet, happy, quiet, mostly solitary, summer in the woods is almost over. In a month or so, I'll be moving back into my winter digs in town. 

I feel determined to build a winterized cabin here next summer so that next year I can stay. I'm not sure how I'm going to manage to do that. But then, I wasn't sure how I was going to manage to get my house moved or power and high speed internet hooked up this summer and it all came together, with the help of many friends and friendly professionals - so I'm sure I'll figure all of the necessary steps out somehow - and receive all of the help I will need!

Random Banjoy – Joe Dassin

A friend and colleague put me on to listening to Joe Dassin while he and I collaborate on typesetting a bunch of French financial reports.

While listening to a 50-song YouTube playlist this morning, I came across this one – with #banjoy.

Had to share:

Mindfulness and Meteor Showers

Every year I get excited about the Perseids meteor shower – and then it's overcast or there's a full moon or I forget about it or I can't be bothered to get up in the middle of the night and go look.

This year, it felt important to me not to miss them. I read that while they peak around August 11–12, the light from the waxing moon may interfere with viewing this year. So I decided to make some time to view them before their official peak.

Tucked away in the woods, my view of the sky is somewhat limited, so I asked a friend who has a glorious hill behind her house if she would mind if I drove up to the top in the early morning to do some star-gazing. She gladly welcomed me to share her skyscape.

Staying up late is not my preference, so instead, I got up early.

I drove in the dark up the dirt road leading to her hilltop, the long grass in the middle of the road pinging against the bottom of my car. At the top, it was brisk, but not too brisk. Breezy, but not too breezy. Extremely clear. I was on the late edge for viewing (after 4am, with the sun already starting to lighten the east), but the moon had set and most of the sky was still very dark. I saw seven meteors in about 20 minutes, with the two brightest just before I left to come back home and start working.

As I stood there (I had forgotten to bring a blanket to lie down on), I thought about how magical it is to watch shooting stars. Calm, with happy surprises.

Calm can be a tricky place. It can be easy to slip from calm into the stories we tell ourselves to keep our brains busy. I don't know about you, but some of the narratives I spin about my life are not very pleasant ones. A few times while I was star gazing this morning, my mind drifted off to think about difficult things: work and personal relationships that are troubling me, the book that I'm reading about trauma (The Body Keeps the Score) that is stirring up many upsetting feelings. Each time my mind strayed – Whoosh – shooting star! And each time, I felt a surprised and delighted smile sweep my face, hustling my anxious, hamster-wheel thoughts out of the spotlight.

It strikes me that "calm with happy surprises" might be the optimal state for human life.

Calm without any surprises is boring. From there we often slip into old scripts: catastrophes, anxieties, dramas, anything to make things interesting and give us an illusion of control. Never calm, (i.e. continually stressed) is a brutal way to live. And mostly calm with unhappy surprises, with that slammed from out-of-the-blue feeling, is definitely not optimal.

I have a lot of calm in my life right now. I need it and I'm grateful for it.

I'm reminded this morning to seek out and appreciate happy surprises too.

I had one last Friday, when some friends dropped by and invited me to join them for supper and a few hands of gin rummy.

And come to think of it, I had another happy surprise a few weeks ago, when some friends were home for a visit and spent an evening reminding me how to play Slay the Demon – a game I find deeply meditative and sweetly surprising. And of course, some visits with my favourite young people this summer have been spontaneous and full of in-the-moment sandcastle-building and wave-jumping. And some heart-to-hearts with friends have taken me to that same "brain-lit-up-in-connection" good place.

Waves are happy surprises. So are smiles and hugs. So are friends dropping by. So is dancing. So is breaking out into song. So is the High-5 burger at the Hebbville Tastee Freeze.

I'm reminded to cultivate and/or appreciate happy surprise interruptions to my long hours of work and the dark thoughts that sometimes take over my mind while my hands are busy typesetting.

When you wish upon a star...

Lost and Found

Salinger seems to be quite content here in the Crooked Wood.

He has forsaken his winter hobbies of knee-nibbling and paper-tearing/chewing and taken up a hearty interest in rodent butchery. The game is plentiful.

At first, the carcasses were being left in the driveway, but this week, Salinger began to bring his offerings inside. One morning, I stepped on both a disembodied mouse face and an internal organ of some description. Another morning I chucked out a squirrel tail and one rear haunch.

Salinger's new hobby has led to a few misunderstandings between us. I suppose it's understandable that he would have hurt feelings when I "ew" and "ick" loudly over his wonderful trophies.

The other night, I got home late and heard him come in with a prize around 3am (I'm sure he has been doing this regularly, but I have happily slept through earlier instances of this behaviour).

What I heard was th-thump, as he came in through his "back door" (an open window with a torn screen).

Then, rustle.

Rustle, rustle.

Squeak.

Rustle, rustle, rustle, rustle.

Squeak.

Rustle.

Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch.

Yuck.

Yesterday, Salinger brought a live mouse into the house and let it get away. Saving it for later, no doubt. It has been living under my arm chair ever since.

Last night, the mouse came out to explore.

Rustle, rustle, rustle.

I imagined it running over my face and got a bad case of the shudders.

And where was Salinger? Why was he not dispatching this little nuisance which he had inflicted upon me.

No sign of Sal.

Around 8pm yesterday, I walked to my mailbox about 1km away, and Salinger walked part of the way with me. At the limits of his territory, he peeled off to engage in other pursuits. I thought I would pick him back up on the way home, but though I called, he did not come. The neighbours' dog was out, so maybe that was enough to make Salinger too shy to show himself.

I came home alone. All night and all of this morning, no sign of Salinger. Around 11am, I decided to walk over to the mailbox again, calling to Sal along the way. About half way there, I heard a plaintive "mew". There was Salinger, uninjured, but either lost or too scared to make his way back home.

We had a typical, belly-rubby reunion and then I encouraged him to follow me home. Fortunately, the neighbouring dog was not outdoors, but Sal still crossed to the other side of the road when we went past his house. Finally we arrived at the refuge of our own driveway though Salinger remained uncharacteristically cautious.

But by the time we were back at the house, he seemed to relax and was very happy to have a snack and then head outside to bask in the sun.

I'm glad I went out to shepherd him back home.

Maybe at some point today he'll find that darn mouse under the arm chair and kill it, preferably after escorting it back outside.

An uncharacteristically sober portrait of Salinger, with his tail down low, rather than waving at its usual jaunty angle.

Set up! (A tiny home/land development report)

Well, well, well.

Here we are.

Yesterday morning, Eastlink came and connected my Internet. And now I am comfortably geared up here until October.

The Internet hook-up was the stickiest piece of this whole process! It required FOUR separate calls to Eastlink. TWO of them were required to try to sort out the mess made on the first call. And I had two separate technician visits. It required a bit of patience, but we got there in the end. 

I am proud and happy to announce the end of Phase 1 of this project. Seven and half weeks to get from a space cleared out among the trees to home, garden, shed, civic address, mail delivery, electricity and high-speed Internet. I am pretty impressed with everyone I've worked with to make this happen (except for that first – #facepalm – contact at Eastlink). I have been blessed with professional, efficient, respectful and pleasant people working on this project. 

I feel very happy to be settled for the rest of the summer, without any more major projects needing to be undertaken on my land. My main focus now is to buckle down and work hard at my computer to save up for Phase 2. There is a slight chance that I might decide to dig a well this summer, but for now, I continue to be grateful for my water-sharing neighbours, friends and family members.

My folks have given me a small chest freezer to put in my shed which means I can easily make ice to keep my cooler cool, and I have longer term food storage – between the freezer, my garden, electricity and Internet access, I won't need to go into town as frequently.

Essentially, I am content. Deeply content. And so is Salinger, who is contemptuously licking one of his back legs as I write this (he is cold-shouldering me because I did not respond with glee to stepping on a disembodied rodent face in the house this morning).

This is probably my last tiny home update for a while (except for some possible garden updates through the summer). Stay tuned for writing on other topics.

My first (real) foray into gardening

I love the idea of gardening.

What's not to love? Being attuned to nature, being active outdoors, raising the most local food possible, saving money, saving the earth, knowing where one's food came from and how it was grown – gardening seems like a no-brainer for everyone who has enough energy and enough space to do it.

In practice, my past attempts at gardening have not been very successful. It has varied a bit, depending on where I have been at it my own life and heart, but on the whole, my thumb is not green. At times, I have felt sorry for the plants that came into my life. I remember being given some "Lucky Bamboo" once as a house-warming present in Toronto and thinking, "No, this bamboo is not lucky. It is Unlucky Bamboo." And sure enough, a couple of months later, it was dead. Many of the plants that have come into my life have suffered from a combination of neglect and over-compensation. Many have perished.

As a result, though I grew up in a gardening family, I have not had a garden of my own for many years.

Sure, back when I was a yuppie, I had a backyard that the previous owner had had professionally landscaped. It occasionally warranted a little desultory pruning, but that hardly counts as gardening and those were ornamentals - and those don't count for me - at all.

Over the years, I've had a number of failed attempts at vegetable gardening – some things in containers at various urban apartments, and one summer since I moved home I was invited to grow a few things in my folks' garden – 45 km away. Not too surprisingly, much neglect (and good-natured ribbing) ensued.

I find it difficult to pay attention to a garden. The shriveled tomato plants and dried up herb gardens of my past haunt me, mournfully waving their reproachful brown leaves at me.

But, I love the idea of gardening. And I especially love the idea of gardening here, in the Crooked Wood. So this spring, as you may have already read, I got help from a friend to build a hugelkultur bed and my folks gave me a raised bed kit and away I went.

So far, things are going well. I planted a few things from seed: peas, beans, spinach. The spinach didn't take, but the peas and beans are thriving: 

Peas and beans – June 22

Peas and beans – July 3

The onions and potatoes are doing well, too. Some tomato and leek starts that my pops gave me out of his greenhouse are adjusting more slowly.

Potatoes, onions, leeks and tomatoes – June 22

Potatoes, onions, leeks and tomatoes – July 3

I also got some starts from some other local sources – a few from Stewart Hebb's, some from the Village Nursery and some from the West Dublin Market: Zucchini, arugula, mesclun mix, butternut squash and a few herbs. Interestingly, two tomato plants that I didn't have room for in the raised bed and put in the hugelkultur bed are now twice the size of their compatriots. I'm not sure if this is because they are getting more sun, or if they have more room for their roots, or if the hugelkultur mound retains more moisture in the dry conditions we've been having (which may or may not be because it got well mulched with seaweed and the raised bed did not. I ran out of seaweed – I will need to get a much bigger load next spring). 

Mixed greens, squash, tomatoes and herbs – July 3

Salinger enjoys the garden, too, and often hangs out with me while I'm working there – and gets all nice and schmutzy, rolling in the dirt.

Mmmm, schmutz!

I started small with my garden this year. With so many unsuccessful past attempts, I didn't want to set myself up for failure and disappointment. I think that was a good decision, especially with all of the dry weather we are having this spring – without running water here, keeping the two beds I have moist is enough of a challenge for me.

I think it's fair to say that I'm appreciating this experiment so far. I enjoy having tasks like, "Hill potatoes" on my to-do list. I expect I will have my first home-grown salad today. A garden is a perfect complement to a life with limited refrigeration. It's also great for a person living alone – I can pick things as I need them. I won't have any more big bags of purchased greens going partly to waste because I can't eat through them quickly enough.

And, since the garden is right outside my window, it's difficult for me to forget about it or neglect it. So far, at least.

Since things seem to be going well, I've started making plans to expand my garden next year. My Amazing Friend dropped off a gift of horse manure the other day and I have constructed two more hugelkultur beds (which I will drape with black tarps – on the advice of my friend Jude – to kill any weed/grass seeds in the manure and help it compost thoroughly before next year).

Next year, I want to grow broccoli and cabbage and bok choy and perhaps I will make another, deeper raised bed for some root veggies like beets and carrots. And some more potatoes. I only have a few blue fingerling potatoes planted this year; next year I would like to have more variety.

One of two new hugelkultur beds being prepared for next year. Next spring they will be topped with soil mix and seaweed and will be good to go.

One of the most enjoyable things about this gardening experiment for me is learning. I feel curious to find out what does well where. And I love the thought that I will have the opportunity to try different things in subsequent years – to test and assess and change and develop. 

Hopefully, I will build a gardening habit and gain some skills that have eluded me in the past. Now, if I could get get curious about organizing and tidying...