Happy Halloween!

The weather here has been oscillating between that wonderful Halloween-fall air filled with the smell of dried leaves and a stiff cool wind swirling through the trees, and being back to summer, stripping us down to t-shirts to lay around in the sunny grass. Life is tough on the island! So many wonderful ways to be.

The dust is settling and our health is perking up again, meaning Tim is getting back to work on his dad's boat and leaving me home to get finished with my Masters coursework while Tilly practices being a big girl and giving me a few hours of alone time.

I'm working on my Alaska studies course, which is drawing me back to all the things I love about Alaska - I wrote a paper about the stability imparted by the wisely invested Permanent fund of over $48 Billion, and now I'm orienting my second paper around the newly sprouted Farmers Markets of Juneau. The star of Juneau agriculture in my eyes is our one and only WWOOF farm run by my life-long friend, Rick. I found a three-year old article in the Capital City Weekly written about him and his awesome organic farm out on Shelter Island. A part of me says, "See? Look how awesome Juneau could have been for farming!" but the rest of my brain has stayed sane and laughs, looking out at my chicken coop ready for a couple dozen birds and our orchard resetting itself for another year of producing apples and cherries; this is a good spot to be. We're starting to get to know a few neighbors, including the previous owners of our house who saw me walking down the street yesterday and invited Tim and I over this morning to pick up a couch.

Launi gave us a tour of their new house around the corner from ours and blew me away when we stepped onto the back porch to look out over the garden. "When we moved in, there wasn't even grass." she said of the flourishing gardens and beautiful landscaping. "We didn't really plan it out before we started putting in beds, but there was just exactly the right amount of room left for our greenhouse over there." They have only been in their new house for five years and they have already transformed the landscape into something both picturesque and productive. As we lifted the couch out of the garage and into our truck, we stepped around buckets of freshly pulled garlic from her gardens. Hopefully in a couple years, our yard will also be producing a bounty of wonders. It's hard to be patient and take things one at a time, but for now, my coursework has to take priority over clearing branches into the chipper pile and finishing up the compost bin, and with an exhausting puppy, there's only so much productive time in the day. In the next few days, our new blades will come for the lawn tractor for better leaf-and-grass-sucking action and I will get out there and do my own yard work while Tim manages the tractor-beast and the puppy takes a long nap. Until then, it's time to focus!