how do the days go by so fast?

It is nearing May, although it feels like early April most of the time--chilly. It has been a weird spring. We were blessed with a morning prairie thunder storm, just enough noise to be interesting, and an inch of rain for the living souls. Kaleigh and I talked about god and nature, and about how there are a lot of different ways of looking at god, and how one of them is nature. Kaleigh likes to call it nature and not god. I told her I thought how people going to church this morning might be complaining about having to get their good clothes wet, or have to run into church while it was thundering. But we were sitting in the slacker chair, snuggled, with a blanket and the windows open, listening to rain pour, reading the last chapter (the Christmas chapter) of a good funny book. We could appreciate god/nature for the storm, and be happy about it. Yeah, we had a good time.

A neighbor who sells scrap metal came over today to let us know he had a manual hydraulic log splitter. It needs no gas and no juice, but works with it being pumped. He sold it to us for $25, what he had in it. I'm sure it's worth a lot more than that. I'm glad to have such good neighbors. We gave them wood early in the spring, cuz they were cooking on their pot-bellied stove and needed some dry wood. This community stuff is nice. Better than any insurance I could buy!

I came into possession of some smoky fennel, many many plants of it. I'm going to find a place to put it for my friend Patrick, and hopefully it will grow. He loves fennel!

We have harvested the worms in our worm bin. Apparently we were doing the do nothing way with the worms, and it worked, although it worked through sheer luck. It was kind of wet in there, but they still lived. The deeper layers smelled more like old garlic peels than bountiful black soil. Worms are cool, tickly and wriggly. We separated out many buckets full of moist black beautiful worm poopy soil. It is the richest stuff I have ever seen. Even though it is sopping wet, the particles do not cling to each other, but keep plenty of air in there. I spread it around some of our plants and trees before the inch of rain came down. The worms are going to be adopted out by folks attending our FREE vermiculture symposium on Wednesday. I hope we have enough for everyone!

It seems everyone everywhere is talking about gasoline costs (slightly down from the $4.16/gallon price the other day), which leads into talking about all the issues facing americans living the not-cheap-anymore fossil fuel lifestyle. I've talked to so many people about gardening lately!! People are thinking, concerned, evaluating. Our so-called leaders seem very out of touch with anything going on in the real world. The only time I hear politics mentioned by people I talk to face to face is with some sort of disgust. No one it seems, is really eager to vote--and I'm talking about normal people, not just crazy anarchists and other "apathetic" people. Well, anyway, gardening is a lot less mediated and less frustrating than politics.

I wrote a transition primer on car-free living in Springfield. It's a how-to guide on some ideas of living here car-free. It is getting easier for us. I think because shopping is such a pain on the bus, we don't do much of it. And because we don't do much of it, it's getting a lot easier to just not do it, ever. I am amazed, but we still have most of our economic stimulus $ in the bank, because we just hate shopping so much. And yet, I feel compelled to invest it in something tangible--quick!!!!--before the dollars lose any more value. Well, that hydraulic log splitter was something--local, reused (not recycled!), informal transaction. Is it the end of the world as we know it? Hallelujah!

carey