speeding up now

I was ticking through the to do list today and realized that despite 3 feet of lingering snow, it is garden season for sure. The house is full of starts and experimental bottles of chicken poop tea, which has been quite successful so far - the first guinea pig tomato plant is much, much greener than the others. Two days ago, I planted (with the help of Liam and Théa, of course) the first starts in the garden. Bok Choy and spinach went in the ground in the greenhouse, which got a fresh coat of plastic last weekend. I've got them covered with row cover and plastic at night, as the temps are still well below freezing, but they made it through a couple clear nights so I think we may be OK.
And the hoop house is uncovered from its snowy tomb, so I think on Saturday I will try to dig it out and get that started. Maybe this evening even. It's time to get the ball rolling.
The kids are even more into the gardening this year. Liam especially knows a thing or two about putting things in the ground and what results, and he's very intense about it all. I realized the other day as he gazed at a seed rack in the store in much the same way he gazes at a shelf of toys that I was raising a gardener. Liam was frustrated last week by Théa's flippant attitude about the earth they were preparing - he was making rows, she was filling them in, helpful as always. She later moved on to burying her doll in the garden. Liam had to leave the greenhouse, he was so frustrated. At bedtime he requested a Mommy and Liam day where he and I just gardened. You betcha, kid. You betcha.
The weather outside has been awesome this week. Sunny and mid-40s. Snow is melting like crazy up on the ridge, and in town, it is full-blown spring. I helped my friend Mike work on a studio he is building next to his house this week, which was wonderful because it put me firmly outside for much of each morning. I could no easier have sat inside at a computer than pulled my toenails off one by one. It's been a longish winter, even with the break in Hawaii in February. I'm ready.
Last week, I attended a forum on high tunnels. This is essentially what I did myself last year - planting in the ground under a plastic canopy - only the government is giving out huge grants to buy these things for us. $4.1 million has already been spent in the Homer area, they reported, on more than 100 tunnels. Nuts. The town is going to be floating in greenery come this fall if even half of them get up and running. So I applied for my own - won't know until next January if I get it, but I'm hoping. And in the meantime, I'm going to do another pvc number this year to keep costs low. I'll take the plastic off early this fall and then put the new tunnel up over the same beds if I can next year.
So beyond gardening, there is one other notable development in the wonderful world of Rancho Restino. Liam has found the piano in a huge way. He's been taking lessons with Lindiann - who lives at Mike's house - since January, but recently, he has really picked up speed. He practices without being asked to - and is reading music fluently. One night this week I actually had to threaten not to read him stories if he didn't stop playing at bedtime. What???? The last lesson is starting to get him to do multiple keys at the same time, a big leap and one you can see him grappling with, but he's intensely into it, like solving a puzzle. I'm inspired by him, practicing my fiddle more. I'm so excited. And at the same time, my father spontaneously provided help for the lessons last week at a point when I was wondering how exactly I was going to keep up with the cost. Things just seem to come together when you need them to. And the things you need, they find their way into your life. I'm so happy for Liam.

easy come, easy go

Spring in Alaska isn't so much a season as a test of one's will to live here. Have there been beautiful days so far this spring? You bet. In fact, I have pictures to prove it - sunny, warm pictures. But have there also been plenty of mornings requiring a prewarming of the car as well as a shovel to actually reach the car. Yup. In fact, the last storm - wind and snow at my elevation, blew a 2-foot drift across my path. I'm refusing to shovel it on the premise that no one should have to shovel after April 1. But of course, that, too is flawed logic.

Yesterday was the big fundraiser event of the year at the library. It went pretty well, despite the usual chaos right before, and literal running with chairs, etc. For me, the best part about the event is that when it's over, I can focus on other things (like the other three events happening this month at the library....) Actually, what has sunk in today - the morning after - is that my prep time for getting these hoop houses up and going by May 1 is rapidly drawing to a close. I've got oodles of starts planted and they will require housing in due time. In fact, if I were a smart woman, I'd slap some plastic up over the "real" greenhouse and get that baby warming up for the bok choy and spinach that will be ready to plant in a week or two. Last year, I watched a friend grow wonderful bok choy very early in the season - granted, his greenhouse was a palace compared to mine, but still.

Today was a lovely day, indicative of how my life with my children has evolved. It started with a morning at home, the kids playing - and fighting - for several hours while I baked bread (a loaf of which my new dog, Zee, ...who is in heat, but that's another story... ate while we were in town), and then transplanted all the tomato plants into bigger containers. I posted a request for advice on facebook about using chicken poop tea for the fertilizer for the tomatoes. Got lots of advice, much of it conflicting, but decided to give the chicken poop a try, and filled a lovely bucket with 1/5 poop, the rest water. The article I read said to leave it for three days. I doubt I'll make it that long, but we'll see. Then I'll pick a plant out and try it and see if it turns yellow... Good strategy, I'd say.

So the afternoon was spent with my friend and his two children on the beach, where all the wonders of the recent stormy weather had washed ashore, and the leftovers were strange and unusual, we even went and had pizza at Fat Olives (1/4 of the pie sans cheese) The kids love the beach. It's like a giant playground and everyone seems to have fun - although wet feet - by the end of an outing there.

Then to Mike's for dinner and more play - Théa obviously needed a nap today but wound up refusing to fall asleep in the car (didn't want to miss anything) and was subsequently outrageously easy to get to sleep this evening. And Liam didn't complain too much, either. I wish I'd had a little more time with them, another day, perhaps...but it's all good. And now it's my turn as I fall asleep on the keyboard at the end of another wonderfully tired...

Early sunshine

It's almost 9 p.m. and I am trying to convince my children that it is actually bedtime. Unfortunately, the light is no longer working in my favor in that regard. The sunshine now lasts until 8 and the daylight well into 9 and when it is clear, like it has been the last few days, it is very difficult to get the brains of little people to go to sleep. For that matter, it will soon be difficult for me to do the same. This is the GO time of year for me. But I'm a little ahead of myself right now. See, it really shouldn't be spring yet. Spring doesn't happen in March, but the past few weeks have definitely felt springy. And when I put the coffee grounds out on the garden two weeks ago, it actually stayed and the snow is now a good foot and a half lower where the grounds are. Grounds to the ground. Very grounding. OK, OK, I'll stop. Also emerging in this great melt is the leftover pieces of the hoop house from last year. I have to choose if I am going to try to resurrect the plastic hoops or replace them all with conduit (bent metal). I may try the conduit if I can afford it, depending on how many of the plastic hoops were broken when it went down last fall. I should have taken the plastic off well before the snow started, but I saw a friends' house which stayed up all winter, and I thought maybe I could get away with it. No such luck up here at 1200 feet. Sigh. So back to square one, only not really. The beds are all in and the water system is in place and I think the front and back pieces will be easy to fix. So once I can get in there, the mess will be minimal, I think.

But what was I getting at? It's not TIME to be thinking about all this yet. There is still a whole month of winter potential here at Latitude 59. April can produce some substantial dumps, and I don't want to be the one jumping the gun and getting slapped back into submission by the reality that I live in Alaska. So I have not done things like shovel the snow off my walkway or put away any variety of winter wear. Skis are still out. I'm not testing fate any more than I have to here.

On the other hand, it is starting to sneak into my head that maybe, just maybe, this summer will be one of those summers - the kind where you actually drag the kiddie pool up on the deck a couple times and children voluntarily climb in. We are due, and if it happens, I'm totally ready. So much of the work I did last year will pay bid dividends this year. And though there is still lots to do, I'm not worried. I'm not starting at the beginning this time but at the mid-point. And it sounds like I will have a good bit of help from Wwoofers this year, which is exciting.

It's Saturday morning, and the children got up cheerfully this morning and are playing with puzzles. My return Wwoofer Srishti is here and my friend Jennifer and her daughter are coming over for coffee and pancakes. Then the kids go to Matt for the weekend and I get a bit of time to myself. Outside a scattering of snow has cleaned up the world and an eagle is circling. How is it that I get this life, really?

Feverishly farming

Yesterday and the day before I spent the entire day on the couch. I got up for the following reasons: to feed the dogs, to make tea, to go to the bathroom, and once, to get the thermometer, which showed me that yes, I had a high fever. Not that there was any doubt. I probably have strep or something like that, but maybe not - maybe it's just a hellish flu. Just starting Day 4 and it looks like another sllloooowwww day. harumph.

It's been long enough since I've been sick like this that I can't recall the last time clearly. And I certainly can't remember being couch-bound like this. I just have no motivation to move off it. But, from my couch, with my trusty computer, I can plan. Garden plan!

I've found some cool plans online that deal with rope lights as a form of keeping the soil in your starts warm. I'm going to use the rope lights and some of the plethora of leftover insulation to build start-warmers.

I'm also going to build some racks for holding my seedlings - my house is small enough that having them all out on a horizontal space makes for tight quarters, especially once the first batch of chicks come into the house in a few weeks.


I ordered a bunch of seeds a few days ago from Territorial Seed Company. I actually repeated my order for a lot of things, but this year, I must do a better track of logging which plants make it and which don't. It will be interesting to see if I got the squash correct. Last year I got a bunch of squash starts from Craig and so I'm not sure if it was my batch or his that excelled but one kind had a thicker skin and was therefor more resistant to mold and blossom rot. And the tomatoes... who knows. They were all so cold that they produced very little in actual fruit. I can only hope to revamp this by creating two houses - one that is warmer than the other.

I've also been looking into hoop houses built out of conduit. My friend Kathy has been telling me about this for about six months and for some reason I figure it was cost prohibitive. But I went online today and saw that conduit was actually only about 40 cents more per 10-foot stick than pvc. And since it's stronger, you can put in about half as many ribs. I found a great manual on how to build them from Johnny's Seeds and it looks pretty good. So it's going to be a whole new learning curve again (excuse the pun). But I'm looking forward to a more permanent structure.

... A day later (I couldn't even finish that post after mustering energy to go into town and buy Pro Mix, I was toast for the rest of the day). But this morning, the little men with evil drills had left my head for the most part, and I managed to plant my first batch of starts. I don't have my lights set up yet, nor my shelves built, but at least the seeds are in the ground. Let the madness begin!

home again

It's been a couple weeks since we got home now and I've settled back into my world, finally, as have the kids. That's not to say that there isn't a little backward looking on all of our parts. This morning Théa asked Liam, "Do you remember when we went and looked under the rocks for shells by the campground?" It's funny the memories their minds pull out, but that was a wonderful day. There was a little pool down past where our tent was perched that we could get to only by gravity defying scrambling - a train of flipflops skittering down the cliff, passing from one hand to the next. But once there, there was tidepooling galore, and a place we could swim amid the froth of cascading waves, and under the rocks, shells. We brought home quite a few and I'd like to make them into a mobile or something to hang by the window. Later in the visit, Théa, Chris and I went back down there a couple times and swam in the froth, getting pulled back and forth by the waves like riding the most gentle swing, Théa squealing at the vats of foam. It was a special spot. There are so many memories like that - but they have all blended into this collective feeling of joy that I was able to spend that time with them, and the feeling seems to have followed us home.

It is spring break right now and the kids have been with me all week. It's funny but the time in Hawaii really shifted something for me. I've slowed down and I'm enjoying them a lot more. Their little quirks and silliness - even their squabbles. I don't quite know why it all is that much more amusing now - my patience seems to have extended quite a bit. Not to say there aren't moments, but... I'm just happy to have my warm, comfortable home, the kids pingponging through it, and the chance to tell them how much I love them. Gratitude - perhaps that's what I have discovered. As the world unfolds and images fill my screen of devastation elsewhere that surpasses my capacity to grasp, I feel endless gratitude, for my children, my life in Alaska, my friends. We really do have the opportunity to view situations in whatever light we cast them, and I choose rosy.

end of an epic adventure

Well, I'm at the airport waiting for my plane with a highly energetic Thea. Tonight I will sleep with a roof over my head for the first time in nearly a month. What an amazing idea to take this trip, and what an extraordinary adventure to pull it off. We ate a lot of noodles and spent one very wet night shivering, but otherwise, it was the trip of a lifetime. I couldn't have asked for a more pleasant time, loved spending the bulk of the visit in Hana rather than the high-paced hotter sections of the island. There is so much to tell, but for now, I'll just say, it was the best. I'm sunkissed and spent and happy and sad to be leaving and eager to come back, now that I know the secret - it can be done. Thea swam in the ocean every day this week, floating by herself in her swim vest. She has brown legs and a big smile. We snuggled by the fire each night. It was lovely to be with just her for a bit and see what that was like.

Maui days

We've been here in Maui for a week and a half and it feels like a month at least. Thea and I traveled for 14 hours to get here, but it turned out wonderfully. She slept pretty much the whole time on both flights, for which I am grateful - no need for purple medicine or anything of the sort. We arrived in Maui and were greeted by Matt and Liam, lei in hand. Thea was really glad to see her dad, did the run-into-his-arms thing. Very cool. Liam was pretty glad to see me, too, I think. We went back to Matt's mom's house to decompress and soon decided to head down to the beach. Thea immediately stripped down to nothing and ran like a mad woman in circles in the surf. Liam showed me his boogie-boarding prowess. The sun set. It was fabulous. Back at the house, Thea seemed sad and as it turned out she had come down with the same stomach bug I had the night before, but otherwise, it all went smoothly. I headed off soon to the airport to pick up Chris and head out for more than three weeks in a tent. That first night we camped in a private campground, pretty full of people, near Lahina, then woke in the morning to get provisions and head to Hana, on the East side of the island. Hana is a rural town, more cows than people, and though a batch of tourists typically cycle through daily, it is much less tourist-oriented than the more urban areas of Maui. In the past, I have come here for a couple days. This time, it is making up the bulk of the trip, and I couldn't be happier about that. It's a long drive to get to Hana, twisting and turning through the rainforest, past waterfalls and vine-covered trees and over bridges that date back over 100 years. It's a bit like going back in time, too, into real Hawaii.
We set up base in a National Park, pitching our tent on a pinacle of ground overlooking rolling surf crashing into jet-black lava rocks. Each morning, the sun rises right out the front vestible of our tent, and we have coffee looking out on the incredible scene of ocean and mountains and palm trees. It's much cooler in Hana, the breeze is constant and the air moist, but even that suits us both. The first few days were a montage of introducing Chris to the area. We quickly settled into a dodge-the-ranger routine that has allowed us so far to stay our entire trip at this one campground, despite the 3-day limit. We leave before the campground booth is manned and breakfast in town at a park, then go on to our day. This has been a low-budget trip, to be sure, with our main expense being food. A Costco run initially and some supplements from the local store have made it so we haven't even used a cooler. Oatmeal, Ramen, and lentil soup have made up a large part of our diet here, while protein from the local store adds to the evening entree. It's very simple, but sufficient. Fresh fruit hangs from the trees and is amply available at roadside stands. Chris' response to the first banana he ate here? "Oh my god, that's the best banana I've ever eaten." We did run into a snag the first evening in Hana when the cook stove we had malfunctioned and caught fire. There was a fairly comical scene where Chris was trying to move it from place to place and I wondered if the flames would back into the bottle, explode and hit the car, but a towel was sacrificed in the name of safety and the flame was extinguished. It did leave us without a stove, however, but we found a replacement at the local store that has worked well, so that was pretty minimal in impact.
So how have we spent our days? We are fairly proficient at being beach bums at this point, sitting in the sunshine for hours at a time. Chris has enjoyed the surf and snorkeling at various locations. We've hiked around in the woods, visited lava fields, driven remote roads over desolate land that seems so remote, it's hard to believe so many people travel here and never venture beyond the normal routine. We've read a lot, stared at the water a lot, caught the occasional local baseball game, and puttered through the day. It's amazing how little you can do when camping - just the simple acts of life require a lot of forethought and planning. Heck, finding the onion amidst the chaos of the car is a feat in itself. But it has been nearly 20 years since I have camped extensively like this, and I am finding it to be a hugely enriching experience. Simple memories, like the smell of the spice bag, bring back thoughts of a simple time in my life in my early 20s when I camped up the west coast with Jerzy. Then, somehow, I stopped doing that. No more. If I take anything from this trip, it's that camping is something I will do more from here on out.
After a week solo in Hana, we drove to Kihei to pick up Liam and Thea. The kids were excited to go camp, and it was wonderful to see them after so long. Thea's shining eyes peered out at me from behind the car and I was enveloped in their arms - it was quite an experience. I was hit with the realization that I missed the all at once, rather than pining for them while they weren't with me - it was like I felt all the missing I should have been doing for the week in one moment. Wham. We piled in the car and headed out after a few stops at stores for provisions, etc. The little rental car was jammed with stuff - boogie boards, etc., and we wound our way back to Hana as the kids got more and more car sick. As we pulled up to "breakfast park" in Hana, Liam pronounced that he had to throw up and I hastily stopped in the road just in time to avoid an in-the-car illness. As kids do, though, Liam quickly rebounded and within 10 minutes was on the beach showing me his prowess as a boogie boarder once again. Very cool. We made our way out to the campsite and set up for the night as clouds rolled in and the winds got more intense. Hana is a rainy place, but thus far, Chris and I had had very nice weather for the most part. That night and the next were the wettest since we had arrived, but even so, the kids did pretty well. We hiked up to the waterfalls near the campground - a 3-mile hike that Thea managed with grace, and a few bruises on her shins. The next day was a beach day, and one morning we went to the seven sacred pools and swam in the cool freshwater streams before heading back to Kihei. We got in trouble with the park ranger for skirting the pool closed sign and going into the water anyway, much to the concern of Liam, our rule-follower in residence. But the ranger opened the pools only a few minutes after we broke in, so it turned out our judgement was solid and the water levels, which had been significant the day before because of all the rain, had sufficiently receded. For the drive back to Kihei, we drove around the back road from Hana, ending up in Upcountry. I'd never been on that road, despite 8 years of visiting Maui, and it was one of the more thrilling parts of the trip thus far. The terrain was so rugged and remote, starting in the rainforest and then easing into dry land with wild goats grazing and finally into super-dry lava fields and last of all, the lush, cool tree-covered Upcountry area, where there is even a vineyard. We toured Makawa, a small town in upcountry with a western bent, where Chris was happy to see cowboy hats and such ilk aplenty. Thea tried to terrify Chris in an art shop by manhandling $7,000 quilts and statues, and we watched a glass-blowing operation in progress. Then we dropped the kids off amid a thunderstorm and headed in darkness back to Hana - an experience for sure driving that road without any concept of what was around the next bend.
We are no longer the whitest people here, and the toughest decision we have in a day is which beach to go to and what to eat for dinner. I'm writing a bit, and Chris tried his had at fishing this morning, but mostly, it's pretty simple. And oddly, that is working just fine for me - I'm surprised at my newfound capacity to be a sloth - something I doubt I had the capacity to do in years past. Perhaps it's just that now, work doesn't constitute my sense of personal fullfillment? I don't know. Something has shifted. I think it's a good thing, though.