June was Nice

I am sad today. So, so sad. My child checked in on me with a text yesterday, “How are you?” After saying how I feel, which is not good, I followed up with, “But day to day, we are great. Everything is perfect.” Because, we have an absolutely beautiful life, in a beautiful home set in a glorious garden, surrounded by love for each other, and love for our kitten, and we are loved by our friends and our family.

Do you ever feel sad when everything around you seems fine?

Looking back at June, things are just brilliant and amazing here and I’d love to show you. Starting with that lovely finch. I was sitting in my office, and she sang so loudly I had to stop what I was doing and listen and watch her.

There was supposed to be northern lights visible, so I went outside one night to see, but our night sky is too bright and the borealis was too dim, and I saw only stars. But what stars.

My Uncle Jim and his boyfriend got nervous about the new US administration potentially eliminating their choice of whether to marry or not, so they got married at the beginning of the year, the day before embarking on a four-month cruise around the world (tough life). But they are home now, and after a trip to North Idaho to be with family, they stopped to visit us and I finally got to meet my new Uncle Tom for the first time. He is just as kind, joyful, and generous as Jim, and we loved him immediately.

Kellen’s job brings them to Portland often, and when it takes all day and the office gives Kellen the thumbs up to head home rather than stop at the office first, I sometimes get a phone call. “Hey Mom, you home right now?” I love those surprises.

Of course June was all about the garden! We have so many plans for this property, and adding new plans all the time, ha ha. This spring I had planned to rebuild the sundial garden raised beds, but prioritized instead the framing of the greenhouse garden beds. This is now done and will prevent soil from sliding off the mounds when I water.

We do not have vehicles large enough to transport longer or larger construction materials, so for this project I paid the delivery fee to have Lowe’s bring the 16-foot and 12-foot boards here for me. Well. I will never do that again because they chose the boards that no one else would take: all gouged up and warped. Thank goodness it was only for the garden. But the boards were so twisted, they wouldn’t even lie flat on the ground. I carried huge rocks over there and used them to hold the boards in place. I am hoping that next spring at garden time I can take the rocks off and the wood will have resettled into this flat position.

You might be able to tell that the row of “corn” in the row with the rocks in the photo above is missing its corn plants. In fact, out of the fifteen I planted, only two remain at the far end. This has been an ongoing battle.

I tried spending more time there, to keep away the varmint, whatever it was. Each day, one or two more plants would be clipped right at ground level and left there. I spread cayenne pepper around the entire bed. It didn’t help. Eventually every single corn plant was killed. I purchased all new corn, and replanted them. Two days later, one morning two of the new corns were clipped off at ground level.

Last year I thought it was the crows, because I watched them plucking out the young sprouts of corn. So I strung up some reflectors. It didn’t help. After losing 2/3 of my corn AGAIN, I thought maybe it is the squirrels after all. I know they are constantly in the garden burying peanuts and seeds, but maybe they are accidentally biting the corn while they cache their food. Or maybe they are using the corn to help hide their food. My brother Ian thinks they bite stuff off the plant to taste it, decide they don’t like it and leave it. Then the next day they come and try again. Probably. Those little brats. My current strategy is to build little fortress walls around every single corn stem, using those wood chips you see. Ha!! It’s actually working the best so far. I will keep you updated.

As with last year, there is a variety of successes and obstacles due to nature’s relentless attacks. We are rising above the work of voles, slugs, ants/aphids, and something that is wilting the zuchinni before it gets a chance to thrive. We’ve actually harvested a bunch of perfect zuchinni and cucumbers already, so that is fun. And tons of peas, and lettuce, chard, basil, cilantro and parsley. Oh, and strawberries!! The metal mesh lid I built was exactly the thing. Once I sealed it closed, it only took two days to allow strawberries a chance to ripen for us. I had no idea how many strawberries those plants were producing till I protected them from squirrels.

Pedro and I both enjoy the late summer and Autumn proliferation of dazzling sunflowers planted by the squirrels, so we allow them to grow. This year we put so much effort into fertilizing that these sunflower plants are massive, as you can see in the photo above. They are growing tall in between all the vines we planted.

We had a very hot spell. I set up the DIY swamp cooler once more, for the chickens. Pedro built it by cutting holes in the top of a regular camp cooler. He taped a small fan to one hole, pointing into the cooler. He taped a piece of pipe to the other hole. I filled the cooler with ice. When we plug in the fan, it blows hot air into the cooler, which travels across the ice and cools down, then exits via the pipe, and flows into the chicken pen. Our ladies love it so much.

I hang a black tarp over the cooler partly to keep the sun off it and help with the cooling. But mostly the tarp is because the sun shines directly at this spot in the middle of the day, and the chickens will not go there because there is no shade. So the tarpaulin is for shade.

Pedro and I take turns cooking. We switch every two weeks. One blistering hot evening when it was my day to cook, I asked Pedro if he, like me, felt too hot to even eat. He agreed. He said it was so hot that nothing even sounded good for dinner except ice cream. He was joking. I grabbed my keys, went to the store, and came home with frozen cheesecake, three kinds of ice cream, and raspberries. I added freshly picked blueberries from our garden.

My therapist gave me homework last time I saw her. She asked me to build a box that I would fill with things that give me joy. Instead, I decided to finish a twine bag that I had started during a Cherokee craft workshop. My idea is that being Cherokee makes me feel good, so I could incorporate that into my box, which became a bag instead. The finished bag is rather unconventional for a Cherokee twine bag, but I simply cannot help myself, and always always twist crafts into something that is my idea. To be honest, it’s actually a very Cherokee personality trait, and my ancestors have been messing around with technology as far back as we have stories about them. My bag is now filled with small treasures and notes from people I love that I have saved, and even a teeny tiny dragon inside an egg that my brother gave me.

Pedro is not able to work a volunteer shift at the Belle Brigade August race this year, so Genevieve’s husband Lloyd is going to take Pedro’s place. We had them over for dinner so that Lloyd could ask questions of Pedro. Genevieve and I drank wine.