even on a bus i feel free

It's evening, cool. The hurricane that was has not counter-clockwised and north-easted itself enough yet to enliven our tomatoes, our stomachs & our souls. We are still parched, although much cooler.

We are getting the house & yard in some kind of order for the garden tour, wine tasting & potluck (yee-haw!!) coming up this Saturday. Some kind of order is extremely vague, as this homestead always was and always will be a work in progress. But it's tidied enough for people to walk through (er, except the wee back yard), and clean enough to use the bathroom. We have wine bottled, and I'm thinking I may repeat the yum potato salad that we served when Hakim's parents visited. I have been craving that, and it's soooo much better than mayonnaise, and why? Because the sauce is goat and veg broth, silly! I am looking forward to seeing friends & meeting people.

I have new revisions of how big an "average" wolf spider is. Jesus. We found a dead bat in our yard, which is both yeah! and oh! We're glad bats are around to eat the plague of mosquitoes, but sad that one died. Our cats are exceptionally good hunters, and they leave us gifts, as well as supplement their dollar store food diet. We've seen a million big fat crickets; a million more spiders of allllll shapes, sizes, and colors; praying mantids; and butterflies. The diversity of life increases each year, repopulating the disaster zone through succession.

Don't know if I mentioned, but we transitioned rather quickly back to graywater in our kitchen. The pipes do not drain, never have well & never will, I imagine. Hauling graywater is definitely easier than the alternative!

I had a very nice chat with our food stamps caseworker, who fixed her mistake that stalled out our food assistance credits. I have never, never had that experience before (being, a good one). I was very thankful I could resolve that over the phone, instead of having to spend many hours in a standing-room-only welfare office waiting room, to be herded like a doomed cow through a squeeze chute of cubicles, and then yelled at for needing a pen to sign the inevitable snafu paperwork. Whew. She dissed school and everything!

K and I went to the library today & read a lot of awesome stories by Amada Irma Perez, who has written a few books of her childhood life. It was written in English & Spanish, although I can only read the English part. They were terrific stories, and I kept wishing for more. Amada has a real gift for storytelling. K also brought home six, 6!, boxcar children books. It'll be rainy tomorrow, and a great time for reading (after gymnastics class, woo!).

I am really enjoying Rosalind Creasy's edible landscaping book. It has plans and plants & more. I also got today a solar food drying book from the library. This is something I really want to try out. I just gotta build myself a solar dryer....

Still utterly disinterested in politics, and am glad there are only two months left of this ridiculous nonsense spectacle of the wealthy and easily distracted. Professional wrestlers and vice presidents want you to believe them, saith the flobots. But I turned off the tv, and starting playing in the dirt with my friends. That's a lot more enriching, both outwardly & inwardly.

carey