Sleeping Outside

 

                On the third hot night of the year, Mark and I move outside. (It takes that long for him to give in; if it were up to me, I’d be out in mid-June…) We haul the bed from the back of the ark and settle it, on a tarp, near the greenhouse where a hefty block of wood creates a headboard.  I find three light blankets for layering purposes and then the Big Blanket—which a very stiff, very large, cheap comforter that Mark bought 30 years ago---covers it all. By morning, we will be under all of them. At the same time, I bring out a lamp for the table so that we can see to read while we wait for the sea breeze to cool off the night.

                Over the years we have been woken up by a couple of joyful, hairless dogs on a neighborhood romp, delighted to find people out to pat them at 4 AM; showers that came on quickly; a young possum wandering across our feet; and our cat, who was also delighted to have people outside in the night.  We’ve heard many rustles but have never been disturbed by rodents or raccoons. We’ve had owls in the big trees occasionally.  People walk by in the alley or on the street, but, because of the buildings, they can’t see us—I used to hang a sheet on the line to protect us from the back alley but everything is so thick back there now I don’t need to.

                It’s a beautiful way to spend the summer nights. We can watch the stars and satellites before we fall asleep. I wake up in the middle of the night to a garden bathed in brilliant moonlight. In the early morning, the sky is so blue and my house so yellow that I am stunned in wakefulness.  

                Every summer, I dream about creating some sort of lift for the bed so that we do not stress the grass underneath us when we stay out for long periods of time. A futon frame would be great—and I could find one easily. Maybe I could build little frame around it to hold curtains like a tent? That would be cool.  But then I think, where would I put it all winter? I’ve considered using plywood and old picnic benches (which we retired to basement shelves because they would not hold our company safely…) but they are not big enough, or sturdy enough. Cinder blocks? Maybe…if I found a couple of pieces of plywood being thrown out somewhere….I will keep my eye out.  Until then, what we have is lovely.

Free Camping

 

                When my parents bought their camper and hit the road in 1970, they quickly established a camping rhythm. We would spend several nights in low cost or free sites, like rest areas, and then swing into a fancy campground to empty the septic system, fill up with water, and do laundry.  My mother was a sucker for significant campgrounds; our favorite was on the edge of the Badlands, looking back over the landscape.  When I took the Ark across the country thirty years ago, I followed the same system—I had a KOA campground pass and map—and quickly developed a knack for finding cheap camping through close readings of the map, coming into civilization once or twice a week for the amenities.

 It became a game.  Driving back to New England for a wedding with my friend Sherrie, we didn’t intend to sleep free every night. But….one night up a back road into National Forest land…the next at a rest area in Death Valley….a third at a fisherman’s camp…and then, it was over. No paid camping heading East. We made it, so, no paid camping on the way West. It was more challenging because the Ark was full of furniture. I spent one night in the ditch of a gravel road across from Little America; the last morning, we woke up to the sprinklers on the lawn of the city park in Hood River. Roaming the American West, sleeping free in the back of a van, waking up at dawn to move on down the road to the nearest small café for breakfast—it’s a classic story.

When Mark joined me on camping adventures, he bought into the story early on. We traveled out to Eastern Oregon on Memorial Day weekend, camping for free on the gravel roads around Paulina Crater. He explored the lava tube caves.  I cooked him a real dinner on the camp stove in the van. He was smitten.  We traveled this way for several years, sleeping in the parking lot of Mt Rainer one crowded summer weekend, at trail heads to get an early start on a hike, and in fisherman’s camps. Then something happened and he decided that this was NOT OK.  He refused to camp anywhere that was not an official campground. It was not legal. He did not want to be woken up by the police and hassled.  Our camping world shrunk.

                Last weekend, we went out to the Klamath area, a huge, marshy lake surrounded by rugged dry mountains. It’s beautiful but not a popular tourist destination—too far from Portland. Too chilly, then too hot. We wandered around the logging museum at the Collier State Park, rode on a model train designed to carry people around a track through the scrub brush, and watched for pelicans on the lake. One night, we stayed in a Forest Service campground that was ten dollars a night and a third empty  on Friday night—unheard of closer to the Cascades! The next night, we ran late in finding a space and pulled into a fisherman’s camp (also known as the parking lot for a boat launch that has a few tables and an outhouse) around eight. It was free.  We watched the wind whip up froth off of the lake and ate dinner in the front of the van. There was one other group camping at the other end of the lot.  Another car pulled in after dark.  It was dark. It was quiet. It was free. I felt at home.

 

Brain Rot Summer

 

It’s summer. And, if my stress levels after a quick perusal of email this morning are any indication, not a moment too soon. My patience is shot.

On Sunday, The New York Times had an article on the merits of just letting kids “rot” over the summer, rather than scheduling them for camps, lessons, and constant enrichment. The fear—they might just do…nothing.  Hang out. Stare into space—or on their phones. Mess around. Be bored. It sounded like most of my summers growing up. My cousins and I spent long hours balancing on inner tubes in the lake, toughening up our feet to walk across the spiky gravel in the driveway, tying willow branches together to make “houses” and begging my father to jump the wake of our old wooden speedboat he had purchased with my grandfather. I also spent hours reading, wandering the woods, watering my small garden, and imagining whole worlds.  Days talking just to the dog. My mother and my aunt had a running game of Rummy; the loser had to buy the winner a drink when they went out for the weekly shopping on Friday night. Sometimes, they took one of us along. Usually, they did not. It was clearly a Brain Rot type of summer. I loved it.

For the past seven or eight years, I have used the summer as time to learn everything I need to know to make good decisions on council this winter. It is a slow time for council—we shut down for a couple of weeks and, because staff is gone on vacations, the work load is light. I volunteer. I talk with people. I observe and organize meetings in the park. I read about economic inequality and homelessness.  I also stay pretty close to home; we had an elderly cat that I was reluctant to leave for more than overnight and it has grown more difficult to camp and hike in the Cascades, between permit systems and wildfires.  It has always felt like a good use of my summertime.

This summer, I am rethinking that plan. I am on my last nerve more often than I should be. The chaos at the federal level, the fiasco and its aftermath on council, and AI cheating at school have all worn me down. If I want to make it through next winter, something has to shift. This is my plan:

1.       Schedule all of the volunteering and meetings on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, leaving long swaths of time open for Brain Rot and long walks.

2.       Potlucks. More sharing of food. Every fourth Saturday—except in June, when it will be the fourth Friday.  

3.       More camping in the Ark—two or three night outings, plus an overnight or two at a trail head. I am laying the dates out today.

4.       Hiking and walking. The most restorative thing I can do is a long quiet walk and sitting in the sun, staring a trees or rocks.

5.       Kittens. Soon, but not yet.

6.       Read.

7.       Can jam and pickles. We are getting low!

This is where others can help:

Send an early adolescent my way to house sit-- it's just checking that the chicks haven't kicked over their water.

1.       Come to dinner! Eat pie. J

2.       Join me on walks! We can ban all political conversation.

3.       Share the harvest.

4.       Post happy photos. I don’t want to be a bliss ninny, but a constant barrage of political chaos does not help anyone.

5.       Work locally for change. It is the first place you can make a difference. More people need to take up the work.

We are all in this world for the long haul. We have to learn to balance inner and outer selves.

 

 

 

Bee Lights in the Evening

 

It’s been warm this weekend—about 90 degrees in the mid afternoon and no sea breeze clearing the air on Friday evening. It’s ok—I watered all of the gardens on Friday afternoon and we completed our outdoor work before one today, so I can sit in the shade and read. All of the chickens are panting softly or standing in water. The rabbit is tucked up somewhere under the artichoke where he has dug down to cool ground. We even have some ice ahead for drinks.

When summer comes, we move outside and evenings are the best. We’ve hung solar powered lights in the shape of bees on the garden arch and they glow late into the night.  After we have finished dinner, dishes, and putting every beast to bed, we head out to the Bee Lights with our sleepytime tea and books. The lights are not bright enough to read by, but we have small book lights that clip onto a paperback or notebook, glow with blue, yellow, or soft white light, and can be adjusted to point at the text.  I found one for Mark a couple of years ago so that he could read better when we were camping and it worked so well I ordered one for myself. The hold a charge for days and charge quickly. They are perfect.

And so, we settle into the night, cool air breezing in from the ocean through a gap in the Coast range, rustles all around us in the brush (Probably rats….), books in hand. The moon rises over my left shoulder. It is half way to full and casts enough light to create a shadow. The air is warm and  my shoulders to drop. We can hear cars and frat boys in the distance, but neither is loud enough to disturb the night. We will read until our eyes are tired, and then, head inside to bed. Summer is here.

Irrigation

 

                For the last three weeks, I have been having irrigation part dreams. I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night to images of fine soaker hoses, plastic parts that allow sprinklers on stiff tubing, and tangles of garden hose, worrying about the mess. It’s not for our backyard garden; that system took about ten minutes worth of work to become functional this month, when I did the first test run before laying down mulch. It’s the school garden that has been haunting my three AM moments.

                When I inherited the garden back during the pandemic, the three sheds were full of stuff that we did not need. There were boxes of third grade garden curriculum. There was an entire outdoor kitchen with three washing sinks. There was an oversized potting table or two, buried in blackberries. There were old seeds. There were more shovels than any garden could use, but just one pitchfork.  And there were three different styles of irrigation systems with all of the parts. I’ve been slowly finding homes for all of this excess stuff. Last week, I sorted through the weird irrigation parts and put the full bin by the shed. Two emails later, it was claimed by another school garden.

This spring, the Green Club had just enough money to invest in six raised beds- -wood and soil. The plan is to reign in the amount of garden in annual crops that need water, and expand the drought tolerant flower and herb beds, as well as berry and tree fruit crops. Lower maintenance. More beauty.  Better snacks. After we built and placed the beds, we planted and it got warm and dry, quickly. We needed water.

                Last fall, we pulled the entire system from the beds so that we could do a heavy leaf mulch and rework the spaces. I’d set the system  up three years ago from parts left behind by the past garden keepers, added  automatic timers, and been able to walk away from the garden for several weeks at a time. Here in the dry summers, weeds don’t really grow unless they have water, so a focused system is excellent weed control. But it leaked and extended into beds that did not need the moisture.

                 Setting up the irrigation system is a fiddly, one or two person task, especially if you are trying to reuse as much of the old system as possible. It involves laying out the heavy tubing, finding the pieces that will fill in the gaps and trying not to cut the few remaining long sections. It also (should, but does not always) involve an inspection of the tubes, because one was clipped by the lawn mower last year.  This also involves finding the ends— one to attach to the faucet or hose and one to block the water from flowing out of the end of the tube. There are now four rows of beds, so  this happened four times

Once the tubes were laid, I had to find all of the T pieces with the knobs to turn the water on and off for each bed—two per bed—and shove it all together. This is best done on a hot dry afternoon when the plastic is warm and flexible.  I spent several hours alone on a quiet afternoon, working on this task.  Once the heavy lines are laid down, I had help and we attached all of the tape lines into the beds, pushing them onto the knobs and then holding it all together with hose clamps. Instead of leaving the tapes twice as long as the beds (the old practice) I cut them all down to size. Then, we turned the water on, bed by bed. Geysers. I marked each problem with a piece of painted rebar and went back to class  for the day. It’s hard to fix a wet system.

Saturday afternoon, I went over to finish the job. All of the hard work was done. It was time to fix the punctures. I replaced some nicked, leaky, tubing with NEW tubing first.  I found a hose for each row of beds, the two manual timers from the far back corner of a shed, and two splitters so that everything was attached to the spigots in the garden. Then I worked on the tapes in the beds, replacing one row’s problems, then starting the water for that space and moving on. It was cool and quiet. Slowly, the garden went from a dry space to one quietly whispering that all is well. The plants are getting water.

               

Big Shop; Big Bake

 

            

    It’s Budget Week at the city—five nights of meetings, starting at six, and running for at least an hour and a half. Even though it can be grueling, there is no better way to learn about how the city works; each department makes a presentation on what they have done, where they are going, and how it is all funded. It is fascinating—if you are bit of a geek, especially. That being said, Budget Week requires serious food planning. There is nothing as grim as a PB on stale bread for three days in a row for lunch. I've done it, too often.

                We did the monthly big shop at the co-op this morning. Years ago, I made a master list of everything we usually buy from the co-op and I use that to inventory our shelves.  All of our bulk, all of the canned goods, all of the soap and shampoo… After the inventory and the food plan for the week, I  make the list, organized by different areas of the store. My mother taught me this system, although she never used it. Then we round up all of the bulk containers and canvas bags, and head out on our bikes with the cart tugging along behind Mark. It takes a little longer than the old weekly shop, but not that much. And we save ten percent once a month, which adds up. After a Big Shop, we can stroll over in the evening for milk or the few things we need to round out a week. The Big Shop, plus buying some key items in bulk (flour, rice, oats, mac and cheese….), means that I can always rustle something up for dinner.

 

               This afternoon, I spent about two hours in the kitchen. I turned on the big oven—first for a batch of granola and some muffins made with left over ricotta cheese, then for pizza and an old head of cauliflower, roasted, for dinner.  I also cooked a bunch of rice for Tuesday night’s casserole and made soup from the black beans I cooked in the crockpot yesterday, as well as setting up the next batch of sourdough bread to rise overnight.  It was satisfying. We now have several nights of dinner prepped, as well as breakfast and lunch for the week. There is salad in the fridge and lettuce (if the rat does not find it!) in the garden. We will not starve, nor will we eat a stale sandwich.

                I started cooking in batches on Saturday mornings when I was a senior in college. I lived alone, so I made soup one week, baked beans the next, and a casserole the third week. I’d eat a third and freeze the rest so I always had lunch or dinner. I made my own bread every week as well, working rises in between walks to the laundry to wash my clothes, which I hung around the tiny apartment to dry. It saved time and money once I had the rhythm down.  It still does.

Greenhouse Planting Schedule

 

                When the world feels chaotic, it is important to have something in order. And the world feels exceptionally chaotic this spring—I don’t need to list all of the reasons why. You know. So I have been spending considerable time in the greenhouse which is not at all chaotic. In fact, it may be in its best order ever. All of the pots are sorted and tucked on the shelves. All of the trays that are not in use are under the tub (which has been cleaned!). There’s a nice lawn chair in there for reading. And I have finally sorted out the spot to dump the old flower pot dirt so it can be refreshed with compost and reused. Even the peeps are happy to run round inside.

                The planting schedule has also been spot on this year. In a perfect spring, it goes like this:

Late January—sort the pots. Sweep out dirt and cobwebs. Find the extension cords and the timer for the lights.

Candlemas (February 2^nd) – plant the Spring Greens and put them on the window  shelf with the heating mats.

Three weeks later—start the peas and sweet peas in shallow flower pots. Hoop  the spring bed and cover it with plastic so it starts to warm and dry out.

Spring Equinox—Bump up the spring greens if you can’t plant them out, move them off the heating mats, and start the tomatoes on the mats. Watch the weather so that you can move the greens into the beds as soon as possible.

As soon as the spring greens leave the greenhouse, start the summer greens.

 Hoop and cover the potato beds to warm and dry out while you wait for the potatoes to arrive from Maine. If you can, prep the beds for potatoes before covering them. Plant potatoes under cover when they all arrive.

Mid  April—bump up the tomatoes. Put away the heating mats. There is suddenly no space in the greenhouse. Tomatoes everywhere.

Late April-- Bump up the summer greens if they cannot move out. Hopefully they can.

May Day: plant out the tomatoes and give away the rest. Once the tomatoes have cleared out, start the vines in four inch pots.

By Memorial Day—plant out the vines. Mulch everything and turn on the hoses. Cross your fingers that there are no geysers.

Mid-June—bring home all of the peeky looking plants from my classroom to fill the greenhouse for the summer.

Before the Summer Solstice —plant the fall crops in six packs. Anything started after struggles to grow bit before the light fades.