It’s been a busy several days and before I knew it it’d been nearly a week since I made a post. I’ll try to recreate what’s been happening here.
MOVING — Last Monday was my first night in the new house. I spent that day shuttling more things from the schoolhouse, with the last item, as always – the cat. With a nearly loaded truck, just enough room left for him and his stuff, I put him in his carrier on the porch (finally, he gets to go outside!) for an hour or so while I loaded up his food, litter box, etc., and then swept out the schoolhouse and wiped down the bathroom and kitchen.
I got to the new house and drove into the garage using the handy-dandy electric garage door openers. Sheesh, talk about non-Riotlike! I need to ask the landlords if the doors can be opened manually! But I have found a benefit to the garage — once the door is closed behind me, the garage becomes part of the house, where the animals have free reign. I carried the cat/carrier into the mud room and opened the carrier door so Bear could start to explore. The animals wandered around as I unloaded the truck and brought things inside the house.
DOG-FENCE — Although the house includes 40 acres with all sorts of fencing and cross-fencing, it was all fenced for horses or other large animals and would not have held back the dog. So for several days, the dog was permitted outside only on a leash. Poor Luna! She doesn’t like to go potty on a leash, plus she just loves to run around, and she couldn’t!
Some local friends have a fence-building business, and they came out starting on Monday to build me a dog yard. They had some complications at their house (plumbing emergencies) so it took a little longer than expected, but by Friday afternoon, we had this:
There’s the gate (the gap near the top of the gate will be covered with chicken wire, just in case she thinks she could jump through there), and in the background you can see the fence going up the hill. That’s a shed on the right, and the fence goes around it and up the hill and across and back down to the house, which is off the photo on the left. It’s a nice backyard for her, and I can only hope that she stays in it! I’m a bit worried about when she sees deer, which are abundant here — she goes a bit crazy, and might just make it over (or under, by digging) the fence. I may add an electric wire for just such circumstances. Especially since I want to feel secure about leaving her there when I’m away working for eight or nine hours at a time.
WORK — I’ve taken in one freelance proofreading job at the moment, in addition to my usual local work. It’s been a few weeks since I sent out some outreach letters for (mostly) nonlocal proofreading work, so I’m hoping I might hear back from some of them soon. I’ve calculated that I need twelve hours per week of proofreading, at my lowest hourly rate, to cover my new expenses.
GARDEN — My garden this year will have two components — first, the orchard. There are about a dozen trees in the yard here — mostly apple, a few apricot, and rumors of peach and maybe a pear. I will just have to wait to see what they are! My role now is to prune them (long overdue) and to see what grows. Here’s the orchard with the huge house in the background:
And here’s the area that will be my garden (the lower terrace plus however much I want on the upper terrace):
First step there: deer fence! And, while it’s still far too early for outdoor planting (the soil was frozen and snow covered most of the yard as recently as last week), I do have room now for indoor starts. And, I’ve decided to join Melinda’s Growing Challenge (see button over on the right), which involves growing from seed at least one new thing you’ve never grown before. I haven’t decided what thing or things I will grow, but I have lots of seeds to choose from!
Also, another part of my garden project this year is my friend KH’s efforts in the other fields surrounding the house. She’s planning on growing a huge garden using the hot well water (stay tuned for descriptions of how she’ll do that, and how well it works). She’s considering establishing a small CSA, with clients getting a box of whatever’s ripe each week. She’ll be providing the local restaurants with produce. And, she’ll be bringing her produce to the local farmer’s market — in fact, she’s working with the manager of the local cafe to set up a second farmer’s market for the valley, one that will be right by the cafe, and not during the workweek. (The current farmer’s market is 3:30-4:00pm on Fridays, in the hospital lawn which is not right downtown where the visitors usually pass by.) While this is all KH’s project, I’m very interested in seeing how it works, and maybe working with her, and definitely adopting some of her ideas!
Okay, that’s enough for now — time for dinner and to get started on that proofreading…
