if you're happy and you know it

say 'baaaah!"

farm life is good

honey harvest day

it's been a mesmerizing weekend, working with the bees to harvest their honey. i made sure to leave enough to get them through the winter, but we still extracted 9.5 quarts, probably around 25 pounds, of delicious ecovillage orchard honey. the hive that absconded at midnight from the salmon poetry house and landed like dorothy's kansas abode at the edge of the ecovillage field is buzzing along but i left it as is for now, not wanting to further infuriate the already displaced residents (though the really angry ones were those left behind, imagine flying back home at dawn to find your hive gone!)

now it's time to get the hives ready for the winter. tomorrow i'll return the almost-empty honey frames back to the bees to do some cleaning, and then i'll dust the colony with some powdered sugar to gently shake off any mites, and close them up for the winter, wishing them the best. i hope the hives will overwinter well, in these hard times for our apis friends.

down on the farm

another day of hard labor for the mustelid girls...i think this project was called by its supervisor (pictured at right), 'moving the worms' or something along those lines. i am not sure if the worms appreciated it, but i know that the adults that planted the cover crops did not. for context, pictured background left is the industrial strength worm bin that was recently installed at the ecovillage.

incidentally, zarra hates worms and gestures 'ooh yuck!!!" whenever we go out to feed them, but she is willing to do anything her 6 year old fearless leader models, so she naively went along with this worm relocation project.

to the end of the earth and back

those winds of change mentioned in that long-ago last post turned into a gale force storm about a month ago. just as i was adjusting to relocating to life on a farm in a tiny sardine can of a home, the phone rang calling me to ethiopia to pick up our long-sought final family member. last weekend kiran and i returned from ethiopia with zarra, our new two year-old sister and daughter, in tow. now i'm working on an emergency architectural project to add a little more space here, and re-adjusting to parenting a toddler.
i'm hoping to get back to my blog during my 3 month maternity stint and post some more photos from ethiopia and from around the farm (but no promises, of course, life has been very unpredictable as of late).

winds of change

a surprise wind blew through here a couple of weeks ago and stirred things up. i still can't quite believe that i am going to uproot myself from the small urban farmstead on salmon street that i've lovingly crafted in my own image over the past 8 years and condense our existence into a 500 square foot cabin seven or so miles north.
sometimes the weathervane points in just one direction, and you have no choice but to follow its guidance.
more updates on this odd new turn of events soon.
PS: there's been a request for some guest posts from the feathered flock here (who aren't too sure about their role in the move- don't worry, they're coming along for the ride) and given my lackadaisical attitude towards this blog in recent months, they deserve to be granted at least a try. be on the lookout for their squawking.

down the rabbit hole

yes, my apologies, dear readers. i feel quite like alice after she fell down the rabbit hole, and easter is already now long past. i know that some of you still lurk this blog hoping for some sign of life. and life there is, plentiful, perhaps too much, but sadly the route between typing fingers and living it has come up too short time and time again. with the warmth of spring so many new projects have blossomed that i feel a bit like the root children ready to retreat underground already.

my book has been zipping along, seemingly under the radar screen but holding its own. just today i learned that it has won the 2009 green book festival prize in the science category (hold your snickers, i'm sure competition was fierce for good science writing...). and i'm just putting the finishing touches on the salmon poetry studio, located in the columbia ecovillage and nearly ready for a studio-warming party. in the brief 2 weeks i have inhabited it, it has provided a space of solace as well as belonging. and it is a paradise for children. when 25 baby chicks arrive in a couple of weeks i'll never be able to drag kiran away. 

in the meantime, it's not only my blog that has wasted away. the cover crops in my community garden are now knee deep, but i've managed to install not just one but TWO nucs of new bees, one at the salmon poetry villa and one on the farm by the studio, last week. queen and colonies doing fine so far in both locales. i'll be conducting a honey contest over the summer to see which one is more productive- salmon villa might have an edge over the farm, despite its more urban locale, given the profuse explosion of cherry and plum street trees now ensconsing the front garden in what seems like a magical pink cave.

well that is as much of a check in as there is time for now. in 6 months since sabbatical ended i still have not managed to reset my tachometer and make space for things like regular blogging. now with only 7 (6 after tomorrow, count them, count them!) weeks to go until summer break, i'm trying to sort out my priorities once again to see if i can make time for capricious whims like writing for pleasure and keeping up with electronic friends.  there are stories to be told, such as hiking the hills in italy, was it just a brief three weeks ago? and coming upon three families of baby wild boars; the third, yes, third time a curse, adoption loss, and of course the mundane, the cooking, the gardening, the creating whether in clay or compost, or furnishing my new studio from ikea (which one doesn't belong? hint, hint). all of these, in time.

with luck, i'll be back before you know it.

master of mancala

i've been living in a vortex, at the eye of the storm that seemingly kicks into action when a book gets published. although it's exciting and important to get the word out (all 80,000 of them that i labored for the last year to compose), it has completely drained me. i returned from a harried junket to seattle last week that left little enjoyment to find kiran as dilapidated as i, swooning under the spell of a 104.7 degree fever. i've been juggling finding friends to look after her while i've had to run back downtown and forth teaching classes and attending meetings in my spare time. orphey's been enjoying having his new-found friend at home, tutoring him in the fine skill of mancala. here, orphey reclines as he considers his next move against his sickly opponent: