It Happens

Those little beasties are clever. For the past week, the Amigo has been battling a cold. I was still able to teach all three of my yoga classes, but I couldn't face intense cardio or weight training workouts on Thursday or Saturday. Like most viral infections, this one ebbs and flows. The venerable Friendly One feels good for a few hours, but then... I know that it's been eighteen months since I've had so much as a sniffle, but still, I resent the drained feeling, the headache, the throat.

Friends asked us if we'd like to attend a play this afternoon. I suggested that Angel go. The play is some distance away, and I didn't feel up to a long drive in the car, didn't want to risk "sharing" this bug with our friends.

In the afternoon I roused myself and did a little laundry. The world doesn't grind to a halt because the Old Amigo gets a cold. At 2 PM, carrying an armload of clean linens into our bedroom, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror above Angel's dresser. My eyes are at half-mast, are heavy and dull. I sigh, realizing that I've got days of discomfort ahead of me, and turn to the task of making our bed.

Fresh laundry folded and put away, I return to the living room to relax on the sofa. The day is sunny and warm; finally my toes are warm. Sunlight streams in and I remove a few layers of clothing. Now I'm down to a single sweatshirt.

That, and lots of good reading material, are more than sufficient consolation. Time for some tea.

Blueberries

Yeah, I know. Three blog posts in one day is a bit much. But Angel & I just returned from an outing, and it's worth writing about.

Today it is sunny and breezy here at the 48th parallel. 63 degrees Obsolete and sunny is actually very comfortable. Today is the annual gleaning day at the Finnriver blueberry farm in Chimacum. Here's the deal: you pick berries. Fresh, organic blueberries. You give half of your pickings to the local food bank. You keep the rest. Angel and I spent about 2 1/2 hours out in the mild sunshine. We returned with about nine pounds of berries.

We did this last year too. Maybe it'll become an annual event. The people who own the farm are friendly, young folks. Lots of solar and wind energy systems around. Some nice looking buildings. Looks as though they're doing pretty well.

Now we're back and getting ready to have a bit o' late lunch. What a lovely fall day!

Book Update

The first draft is in place. Current page count is 543. I'm working through my first pass of editing and correcting obvious typos and, when I can detect them, awkward sentence structures and out-and-out grammatical errors (Thank you, CL!).

As I work through the draft, I take notes of potential areas of inconsistency. I also note changes that might improve the overall story. These sometimes come to me in the middle of the night, and when they bubble up from my subconscious they drive sleep before them like a frightened bird.

In short, things are progressing. The story seems to hang together; although it is impossible for me to tell whether or not it is any good.

The New Garden

It's coming along. I can work for a couple of hours at a time without excessive strain to back and arms. I have a large (but getting smaller) pile of Roger's Magic Dirt and a somewhat smaller pile of what passes for local soil. The latter is the result of many hours of hard work during which the Old Amigo breaks apart the local glacial till using a mattocks, sifts the rocky stuff through a heavy screen (1/2" galvanized mesh) and then carts the rocks off to the rock piles that lie near the wood pile.

I mix the sifted soil at about a 7 or 8 to 1 proportion with Roger's Magic Dirt. The resulting mixture contains some small pebbles and dimly resembles the "sandy loam" that plants love so much. This is my third such project, and this one will make for a nicely terraced extension of usable earth in one of the warmest, most sheltered parts of the yard.

At this point, it's becoming apparent that we'll need another 7 cubic yards of Roger's Magic Dirt to complete the project. Before ordering that, however, I want to use up all that I've already purchased and (if at all possible) construct some kind of ramp that will allow the dump truck to drop the next load *right* where I want it. That will allow me to mix in place (by renting a rototiller for a day) rather than shoveling into a wheelbarrow and carting the soil to its eventual spot.

Once I have the soil components piled near their eventual location, I'll be able to complete the retaining wall. That will produce said terraced extension.

It will also leave behind a final, flat sunny area in which the Venerable Friendly One thinks that raised beds would be ideal. That project will probably have to wait next summer. It will certainly require extensive fencing. Bambi and his buddies have showed up recently with industrial strength harvesting equipment.

One of my friendly neighbors claims that several members of the local deer population have degrees in mining engineering and are able to tunnel beneath fences that are too tall for them to leap. This hypothesis remains to be verified, but I do note that the section of our garden that is currently fenced has yet to be pillaged. This seems to be grounds for optimism.