27.4.10

SURPRISE

:insert cowgirl galloping into town to save the day tune here:

So, hey. How's it goin'? Good, I'm imagining, and hopefully you're sitting in a stream of sunshine as well. Things here are going pretty well, we're about ready to fix up the bathroom, and initial kitchen imaginings are forming as well. Not the most important news, but for me these things take one of my main mental stages. Another is occupied by the yard, which is looking fine indeed!

A couple of weeks ago we went to a native tree sale and picked up a couple of persimmons, an american plum (later reading they are not the best thing to plant... pfft), a witchhazel that Eli ate and I hope will one day return to us, a chokeberry, a serviceberry, and a river birch (betula nigra, hopefully this will produce those delicioso twigs). Also, for the land we picked up a couple of hazelnut shrubs, a weeping willow and a bald cyprus. In addition, we've put in a row of Elder where our gutters flow out, several peonies to distract from the little A/C unit, and our friends helped put in some raspberries from that lady Carey who is one of our lifetime allies and beautiful buddies. and! Yesterday I was cutting the hackberry and mulberry from our fenceline (too bad they haven't yet started growing In the yard where I could leave them!), and I found big thornless blackberry canes from our neighbors on the side of our garage that was nearly impossible to get to before the my hacking, and a wild grape vine with lovely new leaves growing up the fence on the alley side.

Yeah, the yard. It's nice-ish. It's a lot nicer now that I planted up the first Actual garden bed with broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, two kinds of motherwort and wild dagga for smoking mixes and bitter tinctures, some bronze fennel for beneficial insects, and garlic chives around the edges. I'm stoked to get to the next bed! Unfortunately I exhausted our supply of broken up concrete, so I may have to start lining the beds with artfully stacked red bricks. Should be interesting! I'm thinking of planting a lot of my little hopi red dye amaranths pretty much directly into the ground around the yard, hopefully causing it to self-seed and return FOREVER!! Ha HA! Food, beauty, grace, carbon, and dyestuff. Life is giving.

OK, so that's the yard update, the land is less clear. M thinks he could make a little house on our piece of property, but I'm afraid. I'm OK with the idea of a little house facing the woods, but unfortunately Springfield isn't the abundant forest of a place that I imagine in my fancy thinking. Plus, doing things to city code is laaaame. We'll see how that goes, we're in a slight transition mode at the moment, while attempting to maintain our foothold here. Nothing unusual.

Time for beets and eggs from the ladies!

with a body full of love, as usual,
abby