Quiet and pictureless

I've been working on needle felting, and have added an entire farm scene, featuring our favorite goats, puppy, chickens, and pig, but have yet to photograph and share. Soon! In the mean time, I'll share stories instead.

Yesterday I drove Alice to SeaTac and we made a stop at Pacific Fabrics on the way where I picked up some supplies to hopefully make Search and Rescue vests for Tilly and me. After dropping Alice off at the airport about half an hour later than I hoped, I did my best to make it to the Mukilteo ferry before rush hour. Before the exit for the ferry, there is a digital sign with the estimated ferry wait time. I was in a pinch to get to Search and Rescue practice sooner than the ferry looked like it would do, so I continued North to drive around through Deception Pass. This meant I wouldn't be driving past the house on my way to the work out, so I called Tim to have him meet me at practice with Tilly, a change of clothes and dinner, and asked him to let the team know I would be late. I might have been on time driving around to the north, but after several miles of stop and go driving, I finally passed the semi-truck broken down in the middle of the road, then a few miles later a second one! That combined with rush hour really bogged down traffic most of the way North. Finally I made it to practice. Even after nearly 3 months off, Tilly did amazing! Don, the leader of are Search group, told Tim Tilly is "extremely talented" and we make a good team. It was a delight to hear. There was very little wind so we worked on me learning to direct Tilly's searching more specifically. Next week I won't be leaving the island before search practice!

Back on the farm, I've given up on keeping the chickens inside the fence. We saw one standing on the roof of the barn, so I don't think there's much I can do but hope they continue choosing sticking together and staying home in their nice warm barn over exploring the world. They seem happy here, so I think we're okay. The still aren't laying eggs but I have come up with a solution for the roosters! We've been shutting the little door to their house at night so in the morning they are locked entirely inside the building which significantly muffles the crowing. If we really got serious, we could close and open their windows every night as well, but without roosters in yard, I can finally sleep in past 4:30! I mean 6:30 - they don't crow until 6:30 right?

Tilly has yet to have much interaction with the chickens, but we really wish she could be friends with the goats. Today we took a leap and bought a muzzle. Tilly's been doing pretty well through the crack in the door and on a leash, but that's not the same as running in the yard together and so we found a compromise where I don't have to worry about the other animals' safety and Tilly has a big distraction on her face to slow her down.  We are hopeful that soon she'll learn to just be and the goats will learn to butt and play instead of run.

For Tim, today was oil-changing day for the cars. It is incredible how much driving we do down here compared to the 30 miles of road, 10 miles of town we were used to. I think my car has driven well over 6,000 miles since March? We can go days without leaving the property and weeks without leaving the island, or we can find ourselves driving three hours a day or more running errands across the state. We did our oil change late enough for last nights rain to dry and well before the rain came again tonight. We were so ready for rain!

Pictures added to previous post!

And perhaps more pictures still to come. We'll see.

Currently I am sitting in the lawn, another beautiful evening with the chickens and Tilly. I've been continuing to labor away on my barn projet: yesterday it was cleaning out all the garbage from the barn, including tearing the insulation (aka rat nesting material - heavily used) out of the walls and sweeping cobwebs from the ceiling. I filled the truck entirely with the large chunks of stuff from this barn cleaning project, plus filled a garbage can with the small stuff. This morning I took it easy, focusing on digging the doorway level - instead of indulging in the slope of the hill like it has been. I also got the "barn broom" out and started going after some of those cobwebs on the walls and ceiling. While cleaning out the loft of the barn, I finally figured out why there is a strange little window cut between the chicken barn and main barn! There were two windsurfing sails in the loft there which are nearly as long as the barn, and the only way to get them down was to carefully thread them through the opening into the chicken house and over the heads of all the confused hens, then feed in back out into the main barn section and out the door! With that, the last odds and ends should be out of the barn, though I'm thinking that whole loft either has to go, or has to be relocated about 6 feet. Where it is now makes no sense and blocks light and is inaccessible. Unfortunately, everything on this property was built with nails, so disassembly is a bit of a pain. After staring at the loft and disassembling with my mind for a good long while, I gave up and headed to Oak Harbor to dump the dump load at the dump and pick up five large bags of mixed alpaca fleece from the woman I helped with her loom this winter. I am thinking there will be a very long alpaca rug running down our hallway when Tim comes home and helps me set up my loom, after the goats are (hopefully) settled in the barn.

Rain, green rain

For three nights in a row and a fair amount of the connecting days, we had rain! Finally, water replenishing the well, replenishing the gardens, replenishing the grass and trees and chickens and all else! I was beginning to wonder how long it would be before the rain returned. After the rain comes and goes, and the sun returns, everything green leaps up - like the potatoes! They are now all a foot tall seemingly over night.

What else have we been up to? I assisted with my first real search! Because Tilly isn't up to snuff yet, she stayed home to avoid distracting, and because I'm not up to snuff yet, I got to help man the base camp, meaning hang out and eavesdrop on the radio chatter and run errands such as picking teams up from one area and delivering them to another, or going for pizza. All-in-all, not bad and free pizza is always good.

Back at home Tilly and I tried to walk all the way to Freeland along the beach and got to the next big point before there were a suspicious number of "no trespassing" signs and a house in view. Next time we will start from Freeland and walk back to see if that is the only problem house and thus worth sneaking past, or if it continues to get more crowded.

As we were walking the beach, I saw a medium critter bounce past at full speed, looking suspiciously like Tilly, but then a second critter even more like Tilly was bouncing right behind and I looked again to see the first critter was a Tilly-sized baby deer. "Tilly! Come!" and with that magic word, her head and body snapped around and continued full speed but changed the trajectory for straight to my feet, coming to a skidding halt for praise. Far more than I expected from my little rebel!

On other projects, I've got the pig barn almost finished. Now we need the roof, and the attachable run area and we will be all set for Oliver, the 11lb micro-pig. This barn also suitable for use with new mother hens and clutches of chicks or sick birds needing isolation.

Crafts On Whidbey held the first official crafting class! Which turned out to be my friend Cassidy and I hanging out and having a lot of fun chatting and felting. No complaints there, though making $50 while hanging out would have been a plus.

Mom and Dad come tomorrow, Uncle Joel leaves today, but MOST EXCITING OF ALL: I am going to join Tim and Joe and Woody up on the m/v Whiskey Creek commercial fishing in Bristol Bay, the edge of the Bearing Sea! I AM SO EXCITED. I am excited to see my husband again, and I am excited for the challenge, for work to be proud of! And the pay check will be quite nice.

Productive with little proof

Today was one of those days where I did a lot! There's just not much to show for it. For example, I spent the morning finishing Tim's double knit thick, fleece lined, hand spun wool hat and took it and a bag of other items to the post office to be packaged up and sent to Naknek, Alaska before his boat goes in the water on the 12th or 14th (never put a fishing boat in the water on Friday the 13th!). 

Once all that was done, I hauled the hose back up from the compost pile to the upper garden, finding I can wrap it around my whole lower parking area and still reach. The new seeds wont be up for at least another week, but our mulch pile has turned into a potato pile with green tops sticking up everywhere! Also the tomatoes are trucking along. I really need to get the starts out of the greenhouse and into the garden, though I'm running out of space up there.

While grandpa watered, I filled a wheelbarrow with weeds for the chickens, then collected a second wheelbarrow from my horribly neglected garden in the middle of our driveway turn around. Under all those horsetails, there is giant cilantro and miniature carrots that got pulled up with the horsetails. Also, the lettuce looks great in there, though tastes a bit bitter like dandelions.

I can stand in one spot and fill the wheelbarrow without making a significant impact. I have to tell myself I am collecting chicken food and not trying to save the garden or it would be hopelessly overwhelming. Perhaps if I collect several wheelbarrows of weeds every day for the chickens, we will someday be at a manageable level of weeds. My weeding was to feed the chickens, but also to stall myself waiting for sunset. Once the sun starts going down, the chickens become calm, docile, and sleepy which makes for the perfect time to mess with them (Tilly can confirm we like to take advantage of our sleepy pets). My other big accomplishment of the day besides knitting a had and relocating a hose was re-branding all the chicks!

Their blue baby leg bands were getting rather snug, so I methodically went through all the chicks and removed them, replacing all but four with the grown-up and official large yellow leg bands. The two marans that I want to keep - a rooster and hen, have feathered legs which seems uncomfortable with that leg band rubbing so I liberated them now while they are young and easy. I'm thinking if they are to be my breeding pair to populate the hen house with endless baby chicks and chocolatey brown eggs, perhaps they should have proper names: Henry and Henrietta? Hansel and Gretel? Bonny and Clyde? Andy and Annie? Barbi and Ken? Lucy and Ricky? Fred and Wilma? Barney and Betty? Popeye and Olive? Adam and Eve? Kermit and Mrs. Chicky? We need some votes. And since Tim isn't here...

So anyways, Mr. and Mrs. Chicken are infinitely identifiable with or without their leg bands as being particularly beautiful and feathery legged. The other two that have escaped the yellow badges of honor are "Little Chicken" who has such delicate and graceful features, that even when she is bigger than some of the others, her feet still slip right through the bands; and "Hospital Chicken" who is still rather small, but again, one of two "buff" colored chickens and one of two "lavender" colored chickens - these two also stand out in the crowd. It's mostly all the chickens who are shades of grey or "blue" who need the identifying, and to distinguish which of the white chickens is friendly ("Russia") and which one is the most skiddish thing ever ("Ukraine" - named for their baby markings and not their personalities).

So this is gross. One cocoon is really cool; watching the little caterpillar wrap itself up in a tiny home only to emerge much later as a moth - pretty amazing stuff. But coating every bit of green, brown, grey, black, red, blue, yellow, orange, purple, or white around... It's a bit much. Here they are taking advantage of the little spaces in the gate, and lining the trim around the barn...

And covering the undersides of the railings. I saw someones mailbox that was nearly inaccessible due to the little white clumps filling it. Hopefully the birds like the moths better than they liked the caterpillars.

And this little guy loves to gobble up the moths! My next Crafts On Whidbey class is going to be Felted Critters and Characters: needle felting animals and dolls. I figured I should make an example so the fiber-phobes out there could get an idea what it's all about.

Birthday

Happy birthday to me! I had a lovely nap and walk on the beach for my birthday, as well as pizza and cake with Grandpa and Tim. Joe was visiting for a few days and left on my birthday while I was at my Master Gardeners class, though before he went we had a lovely birthday dinner out and he got Tim motivated to do all sorts of projects we've been meaning to get to, like pulling apart the engine on the Escort to check for damage (could be worse, looks like we can repair it and get the car running again for not too much of the fishing money), and painting the truck - what a delightful sight to come home to!

The back is now finished, after an emergency trip for one more can of paint. He's also set about touching up all the trim with black, such as the cleats along the sides and the lettering across the back. It looks stunning - a whole new truck! And finally showing off the beauty of that 1978 body.

And would you look at those fine mirrors on the moped!

While Mom was here a few weeks ago, Tim unveiled his big birthday present to me - a full sized floor loom he'd done work trade for. Here he is leading me to it blindfolded while he and Mom narrated a scene about snakes about to bite me. Hence hiding behind Tim.

Also thank you to my parents and their support of my teaching plans with a very cool Alaskan themed hand crank ice cream maker (take note all of you planning to visit this summer) and the makings for my glow-germ kids hand washing lesson.

And thank you to Alice for the gift certificate to my favorite store: the Country Supply Store at the end of our street. After a few days contemplation, Tim and I walked Tilly and Sancho all the way to the store and stocked up on excellent, durable, and delicious Tilly toys, to be potentially used with Search and Rescue training. Also some ice cream bars for our long walk home.

It is tent caterpillar season here, and this seems to be the boom year before a, hopefully, long and dramatic bust in their population. We got fed up with their over population and decided to evict them all. Equipt with our extended trimmers, we did a little mid-season pruning on the trees around the property, then took our 5 gallon bucket of worms and nests down to the chicken coop for our relocation project. Unfortunately the chickens didn't eat them, but they have been busy making dust baths in the once-green run. They also have been tucking themselves up at the top of the ramp in the evenings after all day in the sun. Here are 25 rather large chicks tucked together to enjoy the sunset.

On gardening, our last Master Gardeners class was over grafting, so I have come home with many more tomatoes and a few eggplants that have suffered some Frankenstein practices. Hopefully between the potatoes, tomatoes, garlic, lettuce, and eggplants, we will get some reasonable harvest of food, though so far they are all looking a little doubtful - particularly those hot, dry kale starts. In better gardening news, I finally got a compost thermometer after two weeks of rotating my pile every weekend. The temperature is 160f, which is phenomenal and borderline too hot! I have yet to decide if that means I can forgo the rotation tomorrow or if that means I should keep at my weekly pitchfork exercises in hopes of having good soil as soon as possible.

Tomorrow, Cousin Min Min and Aunt Agnes come up for a visit and it is Tim's last day before heading North for a summer of commercial fishing in Bristol Bay. Tilly will keep me company and it won't be long before the next wave of visitors arrive: June for Mom and Dad, July for Nancy, August for Alice and September for Brother Daniel and Amanda. 

Much ado

Spinning group with Gustavus friend-of-a-friend, spinning Tilly's wool, spinning with Tim's mechanical questioning, spinning while watching Toy Story.

Green and blue wool spun and plied, ready to be knit or woven

Dogs playing on the beach, dogs tearing toys and chewing bones, dog rocking Search and Rescue training, dogs swimming in the ocean, dog learning to open gaits, dog very snugly in bed.

Tilly's swimming lesson

A deer in the water, a dog on the shore

Every day is a beautiful day for a beach walk

Who could refuse stick tug?

Plant sale with master gardeners, planting over 40 free tomato starts, planting strawberries here and there, plantlings needing lots of watering, plant fertilizer being made by turning compost and mowing lawns.

Job interview coming up, jobs non-stop substitute teaching, job starting soon summer commercial fishing, jobs going slow starting new business, jobs now qualified for with degree officially finished, jobs in progress while Joe visits.

Building slatted driftwood benches, building custom chicken feeders late at night, building drop spindles for future classes, building improvements on the little tool shed.

Chickens grow and peck and scratch and roost, chicks make new friends with clever canines, chicks explore the great outdoors, chicks eating all the worms in site, chicks enjoying sunny days and warm nights.

Potatoes

I planted the potatoes! Up in the old mulch pile there should now be about 50 potato plats preparing to burst from the earth. When there is some green up and it doesn't just look like a big pile of rotting sticks and leaves (beautifully composting into tremendous soil of course) and there are some little green tops showing, I will take a picture.

Next year, perhaps I will spread all that broken down mulch on the other gardens and try out a potato box! This comes from Tim's favorite website,  USpotatoes.com - who knew there was such a thing!

The little kale plants are looking happy up in the garden. My onions are a little yellow on the bottom leaves but otherwise big and strong. I will have to break out my master gardeners diagnostic sheet and see if there is anything I can do to help them out.

Our beautiful hot and sunny weather has finally gave way to some cooler, wetter days, which is nice for the young plants but not so nice for the young chicks who had their outdoor privileges revoked just as they were learning about the great outdoors. I will have to do some more weeding to keep them busy and happy while locked in the coop. Little "Hospital Chicken" is still alive, now living reintegrated with the others despite falling behind to half their size. Amazingly, the others seem to be mostly leaving her alone or mothering her. Every time I go in the coop, all the chicks are running about except one or two who stay with that sickly little one and cuddle in close, often fluffing up and sitting over her like miniature mother hens. I hope this loving, goose-like behavior keeps up.

Tilly had another excellent day at Search and Rescue training on Friday. She's currently working on learning to leave the "victim" and come get me once she's completed the find. Its a little tricky to break through her excitement to the next step, but she'll get there. On the SAR trainer front, I might get sponsored to go to a two-week intensive Wilderness EMT training course this summer! I hope it works out with puppy-sitters and work and such.

With work, I am lining up subbing jobs at the Waldorf school, applying for the 6th grade teaching position for fall, and eagerly anticipating teaching my first Crafts on Whidbey classes, assuming anyone signs up. Joe will be coming up to Whidbey soon with more general maintenance work to be done on the boat. By the way, have you checked out the Kachink Kachink and recommended it to all your friends? Please do! Price recently reduced, delivery negotiable!

Press Release

So I think I alluded to this, and made the announcement on facebook and to some extent through email, but not yet through our blog: I've started a business! www.CraftsOnWhidbey.com "Workshops and crafting parties for adults, kids, or mixed age groups. Scheduled or on demand." Last night, we had a practice drop-spindle spinning class with Grandpa, Mom, and Tim all bravely agreed to learn to spin just for me. To all of our surprise, they enjoyed it! And they did well at it! Amazing! So with that hurdle passed, I'm ready for my first real class. Today I picked up my brochures and fliers from the printer and hung up nearly all 30 fliers around the island, as well as scoping good places for the brochures. Anyway, if you could frequent the site a bit, that would make the traffic go up and the Google search placement go up?

Additional somewhat related exciting news: today I got a loom! Tim has been working hard on an older couple's property fixing machines and doing yard work and today he came home with a beautiful four-harness floor loom, about 40" wide - for those of you who are "fiber-phobes", that's a really awesome, expensive loom! I now have a loom, a spinning wheel, a serger, and a really nice computerized sewing machine and thus can be a properly snootie and well-equipped fiber crafter, with a dedicated room increasingly set up for it.

On the chick front, we have a purple bird. One chick was picked on pretty badly a few days ago and has been stuck in a box ever since to have some quiet healing time. Today, Mom and I gated off the section of the hen house under the future nest boxes to make a deluxe chick hospital with proper visitation, heat, and enrichment. Additionally, I picked up some "Peck-no-more" from the farm supply store and painted the little bird with the purple goo. She didn't seem to appreciate it as much as you might hope, but hopefully it will give her a better chance to heal.

Have I mentioned we're now a two-dog family? Sanch, Brother Tim and Sister Krista's dog, is staying with us for the next couple weeks until they find out if he's going on the NOAA boat with them as the new mascot. The first day, the two terriers weren't too sure about living together but things are settling in to a good routine of two long walks on the beach a day and lots of practice with their obedience training.

Burning burning burning!

I may have forgot to mention - last week I finished up my portfolio, teacher work sample, research papers, and everything else needed to finish my degree (good enough). I still haven't heard back from the director of the program, but hopefully I'm done! Since completing my degree (presumably), I'm now on to the next life phase: get a job. I looked around at what's available and decided there are only a few jobs available, and all teacher jobs start in August or September anyways which is long from now - so I made my own! It even has a website already: CraftsOnWhidbey.com. I've hired my first employee or two and have fliers and brochures ready to get printed and hang up around town. To summarize, my business plan is to teach arts and crafts workshops and lead nature walks for tourists and locals, and work on getting gigs leading party-type craft activities for family reunions, kids birthdays, etc. Our friends who I am hiring are also starting a landscaping business and invited Tim to help out; so between the four of us, we will make ends meet!

Now that you're all caught up on the news and business, I'll give you a little more about the fun stuff. Or farm stuff anyways. With mom here, we spent Tuesday at the Tulip Festival up in Anacortes and had time to stop in and see Aunt Noree and Bill and her 16-year-old little dog, Lucky. Today I finally got the chicken wire over the hen house windows! And I planted the first of my eight garden beds using the cardboard-then-dirt method and putting half a toilet paper tube around each seed to mark the plants to keep. When I came back from my morning chores, I smelled smoke! Mum had lit up the brush from the giant chipper pile that has been there since we arrived. Over the next few hours, we kept feeding branches into our burn pile until all that was left is about a foot thick, twenty-foot across circle of excellent composted mulch to fill with potato plants. We then moved the fire via wheelbarrow down to the lower yard to continue the burning and dispose of the limbs from the trees Dad thinned in September. After many more hours of continually stoking the fire, we have turned mountains of branches as tall as me into a one foot by four foot circle of ash.

Now we are all very tired and ready for movies or naps or books or researching my lessons for my upcoming classes.

Changes

Thursday, I spent my first day with The Kids, who are great, and saw 9 deer in one spot by their house!

Friday, I had my last day with Island Home Nursing and Tim called in to the kennel cleaning job to let them know I was feeling ill and he thought I should get some sleep, only to find out I wasn't scheduled anyways!

Saturday (after sleeping in) I headed over for a late night with The Kids so The Parents could go out on a date before The Mom leaves for two months. Let this be a PSA that the best thing you can do for your kids when they are very small is continue to date your co-parent so your mental health and your relationship is strong for your family. Set a weekly date and have a regular sitter and two backups!

Tilly really likes the snow. It's fun to eat and chase and everything else.

Sunday there was snow! We woke up to over an inch and I was reminded what a gift snow is, reimbursing the light that is missing by reflecting what there is double and brightening up the world. Due to the weather, our friends stayed home from Congregation and Tim and I made a quick departure afterwards to head for Oak Harbor and the Kachink Kachink for some long and tedious work. I left Tim to do his thing and took Tilly on an exploration of Oak Harbor (fairly disappointing dog park), then I spent some time at an aspiring weaver and alpaca farmer's house helping her dress her loom. She's in the business of bartering with acupuncture and I'm in the business of making friends on the island.

Raccoon?

We've also been watching the Olympics which have been great and a lot of fun. With Joe visiting, we've been having a lot of great dinners together upstairs. Oh, and this morning I made us a giant flower pot, or goat climbing structure, or perhaps auxiliary chicken house. As I started towards town for some errands, the car made a little noise and either turned off or I immediately turned it off. Either way, I coasted to the side of the road and was barely in cell service to call Tim who had just started towards Oak Harbor to work. In a minute, he was back to the car and pulling a long piece of rubber that used to be the timing belt out of our engine. A minute after that, Tim was watching for traffic as I coasted the car back down the street and down our driveway. What perfect timing and location for the car to quit! So glad I didn't have two car seats and a dead phone, miles from home when the car quit. It is now really time to pull the engine on the OMC and see if theirs any hope of changing the belt and bringing her back to life, or if we should start looking for cheap parts to convert her to electric. Tim's a little heartbroken at the loss we were hoping to put off or avoid.

February = spring?

 Well, Tilly and her very brave new friends at Greenbank Farm seem to think it's looking a lot like spring! Even though my hands are freezing after every walk if I forget my hand muffs.

The little plants in our extra-special-farm-room are getting bigger every day! When the baby chickens come in ONE MONTH I will move the plants out and the birds in.

Speaking of animals I'm going to eat, the question of hunting rabbits has finally concluded. We made some new friends OUR AGE today and they are so cool! We are very excited. The young man at UU Congregation said he had a wife, but before today we had yet to see the proof. After being sick for a few weeks, she made it! And we finally got to meet her. Tim invited our new friends over to hang out and watch The Big Game with us. Oh, right, on the meat note, they just got a pair of meat rabbits to breed and I look forward to helping out with the fur and meat production and processing. The young man is working on making a bow and arrows and a spear for alternative deer hunting too. They came over with their baby and dog and spent some time on the beach with me and Tim and Tilly, with Joe and Grandpa watching from the landing on the stairs. We had a lovely time, played deceptively tricky board games, and then I had to whisk myself away. I've been meaning to help an acupuncturist and alpaca farmer up by Penn Cove learn to use her loom for months now and the stars finally aligned. We had a good time working together and made it about a quarter of the way through the dressing process, to be continued next week. I left her to the tedious threading after she got the idea and buzzed back home to see if my guests were still around. I made it just in time to see the one touch down by the Broncos of the entire game (sad, sad game for any fans they may have had in the house) and was delighted to see my new friend finished all but the last piece of that terribly tricky lion puzzle! Hooray! And Grandpa is relieved as well. He says the next person to bring a puzzle into the house is getting their drivers licence revoked by him until it's done and gone.

Over the weekend

Friday I went to my first Whidbey spinning group! Finally, after months of meaning to go, I was free Friday afternoon and motivated to load my spinning wheel into the car and go out. I sort of tried to look up where the meeting was, but didn't find it very easily on the World Wide Web, so I set off in the car with a vague notion that the spinning group was either meeting at a library or senior center. I stopped by a retirement home, where they told me the "senior center" was down the road a ways, so I headed there next only to find musicians all set up for a concert and a very confused receptionist. With senior centers out of the way, I headed back to Freeland to try out the library. The very quiet library with a meeting in the conference room didn't look promising. The librarian informed me there was no spinning at any library she knew of on the island at 11am on a Friday, but opened up her link to the World Wide Web and quickly found the answer I sought; the meeting was in the "library" of the senior living center in town! I managed to arrive right on time back to the first place I went where they showed me to a group of ladies and wheels streaming in and setting up. A kindergarten-sized boy came by and recognized our spinning wheels as something to do with wool and quickly hopped up on my chair and started running my wheel. Amazingly, my yarn was just as thin and consistent with him working the pedals and helping with the draw as I'd been doing on my own. Maybe I'll spin with him again next week.

Over the weekend, Tim helped me set up some seed trays on the counter of my "sheep room" (the funny little windowless room between the house and the shop - I still haven't settled on a proper name for it) with a light to help them get started. I went through my whole seed collection, sorted them by type, and made up a list. I'm ready to start planting now! Though it's January, it's been about on par with many days in a Juneau summer and in 6 weeks or so when the plants are ready to go out side, I'm sure it will be sunny and warm. Our neighbor said we could use her fenced yard to start a garden and our friend Fritz has a roto-tiller we can borrow to get things started. So far, though the seed trays are filled with dirt and laid out under the light, the only thing I've planted is an old potato that was beginning to sprout. Hopefully soon I'll get planting.

We've been taking Tilly on some good outings the last few days; playing hard at the dog park, going on a long run through the woods we me, another dog, and her owner, and today Tim took Tilly on an adventure hike through the woods around our house. When I got home, we jumped in the car to run to the grocery store and when we came out from shopping, Tilly had jumped over the back of the seats and eaten the remaining pound or two of Yummy Chummy dog treats that were in the car. Oh my goodness! So far she has been amazingly not sick and I'm hoping that will keep up. The suggested serving size on the bag said 10 pieces... I'm pretty sure she's set for a month.

Day off

Well, I didn't get a whole lot of cleaning and such done today, I thought about starting seeds soon but didn't make any moves on that either, but I did go for some lovely walks today including a stroll with Sandy and family and a walk down Double Bluff Beach with Tim and Tilly followed by napping and cookie baking - all in all, a good day! (I think that run-on sentence has proper grammar...) I wish I knew what I did with my sewing machine bobbins. Despite digging through boxes I didn't have any luck uncovering them or I would have done some sewing today.

Direct inverse correlation between number of house guests and frequency of posts.

I think this is the first day I have worked and come home to only Tim, Tilly, and Grandpa. The day had intermittent pouring rain and sunshine meaning I put the dogs out to clean, then had to rush them out of the mud as rain came pouring down. Every time I came in, I left a new set of muddy footprints to mop up, and the owner of the business planed the seed in my head of cleaning the areas that would be darkest in a power outage first. I came home and was glad to curl up on my warm dry couch with hot food and take a long nap.

I woke up to a fuzzy warm puppy curled up next to me and my awesome husband riding circles around our house on our little red mo-ped.

Tim sounds like he and Tilly had a pretty good day. Tim got the brakes working and took it out for a successful test-ride. During the brief appearance of the sun, Tilly and Tim ran down the 150 incredibly slippery steps to the beach and ran the little one out of batteries. What a delight it is to come home to a warm, fuzzy, sleepy puppy and an excited and delighted hubby with a new and improved toy. Oh! And speaking of that husband of mine, his hand is looking so much better! After only one long night and day of torturing his finger straight, it is looking so much better and so improved. His new torture-splint isn't much fun, and the pain-dough wasn't such a delight to play with after all. I think in no time he will be feeling much better and having even better use of his hand. He's already able to ride the bike using left-hand controls, and work with his tools again. Horray for recovery and healing!

On a New Years note, Mom was reminding us of all the changes from last year at this time. A year ago, Tim and I wern't engaged yet and I was fretting away wondering when the day might come. We had given up on getting the Honeymoon house as someone else's offer had been accepted. I was filing in as the middle school Life Skills teacher for the first two weeks of the semester and planning my weaving unit for the Art class. I hadn't yet committed to a litter of puppies for Tilly even! What a year we have had! It is so wonderful to be here now, settled in to this good life that seems so normal and right.

Ps. A while ago, I wrote an entry about the perks of getting a puppy in fall. I'll add to that list that she sleeps when it's dark out so in winter she has trouble staying up till 7pm and is happy to go straight back to bed if I take her out at 7 am. I love my puppy to pieces, but it is nice to have a few quiet, calm hours in the evening without a little one to worry about. If only children had the same 14-hour straight plus naps sleep mechanism, new parents would be delighted, well rested, and minimally stressed.