Heron in late afternoon at the Delta Ponds

A very happy Thanksgiving to all of you out there who are celebrating. It's been a cozy day here. We follow a pattern of having the big meal early so there's time to walk later... and so we can graze on leftovers for dinner. :-) This was Jenny's first time roasting a turkey, and it turned out really well, moist and flavorful. There were colorful paper plates (enough work has gone into cooking, so we spare the dishwashers--Ben and Cade--this extra burden), dressing in two varieties (veggie and non), all the traditional foods we only make on this one day, pumpkin pies made with freshly-roasted pumpkin... and an assortment of intriguing mini-desserts brought by Annie and Beth. The house smelled of good food, there was talking and laughter, and in the living room the fire in the pellet stove roared away as rain poured down outside.

Con entertained (or monopolized, take your pick) Annie and Beth, Jenny gave us a demonstration of how she's learning to spin yard, and the boys ended up in a game of Wii tennis after the main course was over. After Annie and Beth had finally left and the food was put away, Ben, that total creature of habit, decided... to rearrange his room! So, darkness having now fallen and 'the girls' having been tucked into their coop, Paul and Ben are rearranging Ben's room, Jenny is spinning and Aaron is cleaning out the pellet stove. And I'm out here in the cottage writing up this entry, filled with images of a very pleasant day. There was a time when it was only me and the boys on Thanksgiving, an empty-seeming follow-up to the crowded, cousin-laden family gatherings I'd experienced as a child. So this was nice--very nice indeed. And I hope all of you had days that were equally as nice.

One of our very friendly Black Australorps hens taking a closer look

No doubt it appears I've dropped off the face of the earth. That would be more dramatic than the truth, though; in actuality I've just been sitting here at this desk working away on a website redesign, which with any luck I'll have finished within a week. Less if I'm very lucky. Then I'll have a chance to breathe, look out at the surroundings, and start thinking about things like baking pumpkin pies, and Christmas upcoming, and... How did it get to be past the middle of November already? It seems like just a few days ago we were in the thick of canning and preserving back in September.

In the meantime, fall has continued to progress here. We've had enough constant dampness to revive the seasonal moss, which grows in sidewalk cracks, along the edges of roadways, on roofs and just about anywhere else that stays damp or shady, though we've had less actual rain than usual, and more sunbreaks (I'm not complaining about those.) Most of our trees are pretty bare now, except for the apple and hazelnut which--strangely--still have a respectable canopy of yellow-green.

Down the street, however, neighbors Beck and Annette's liquidamber (the multicolored, glorious torch of a tree at left in the photo below) is still quite spectacular, like a stop-action display of fall fireworks. And you can see in the picture how tall some of our neighborhood trees are, one of the things I really, really love about this place.

Looking from the cottage toward the back of the house

The picture above shows what the yard looked like a little less than two weeks ago. Now, over half the leaves are off the trees and the path to the door of my cottage is paved in fallen leaves and fig puree. In the garage, we have leftover tomatoes that were picked green, along with some apples, winter squash and Bosc pears from a neighbor's tree. The apples and pears really need to be processed, though we've been too burned out from the big August-September canning/dehydrating push to do it. Hopefully they'll last a while longer.

I'm in the middle of another web redesign job, but what's really captured my imagination recently has been--drum roll--making photo books. I'd always wanted to do one, and a few weeks ago I finally did some comparative research about the different services out there and chose Shutterfly. My first photo book, created as a Christmas gift for my good friend Listen, arrived last week and I was definitely impressed with the final result. The pictures were clear, the colors were very consistent with the way I'd prepped them on my monitor, and they offered quite a variety of page layouts to choose from. As usual, I wasn't just puttting together a collection of pictures but telling a story at the same time, which made the project a lot more work that if I'd just tossed together a picture album. But the end result was worth it, and besides, for the first time in years I've got Listen's present ready way ahead of time--yay! I'll even be able to get it packed and prepped and fill out that annoying little customs sticker before the mobs hit the post office for the Christmas rush.

I also found that my experience at writing XF 155-word fics came in really handy when I inadvertently entered more in the text areas than would fit. That training in trimming down words and phrases to fit the word count enabled me to zero in quickly on the most likely things to eliminate. Who knew fic writing could come in so handy in the real world? :-) Now I'm hard at work on a second photo book and have ideas for a couple more I'd like to do when I get the time.

While all this has been going on, we've been having what I can only describe as a 'quick autumn'. The temperatures have been generally warmish, with rain off and on (more off than usual), but finally the trees are losing their leaves and that sure sign of the colder seasons has finally arrived: our fine, misty fall fog, which you can see in the picture below. I can't quite pinpoint what it is that differentiates our Eugene fog from the fog I've experienced in other places, but there's just something... well, magical about it. It's not as opaque, but more like a whispy veil. You can see someone coming out of it as they approach you and it's as if they were coming from another dimension. I love what the fog does to the landscape, too, and the photographic possibilities that come out of it. You can bet I'll be out there camera-in-hand to take advantage of it before it's gone.


Red maples in the fog at Maury Jacobs Park

The forest is currently lit up... with trees! Come see.

Found myself frustrated after Thursday's trip to the mountains, because my pictures just weren't having any impact at the usual size I display them. So I made the pic above into a wallpaper, and believe me, at 1024x768 it makes a pretty cool desktop display if you're looking for something new and outdoorsy to look at. Feel free to help yourself. You can find it at the bottom of this page along with one other new wallpaper offering.

Have fun!

First view of the Cascades, coming up out of the forest on a mountain road

HikingFriend invited me and another mutual friend for a drive in the mountains today. It was the perfect opportunity because I've had a little breathing space between projects, and because there's been sun all week, though rain is predicted for next week. And rain in the mountains will translate to snow and potentially impassible roads. So out we went while we had the chance, climbing up sometimes-paved, sometimes-gravel forest roads of a width that can only be described as 'two lanes or less'. In roughly two hours, we passed only three other vehicles. Along the way we saw fiery vine maples, gorgeous volcanic snow-covered peaks, snow beside the road in the shady areas, ferns, moss, two deer and burbling creeks. The clear air was filled with the sweet, damp scents of the forest and wrapped in silence. While it was cold in the shady areas, the sunny spots held that fragile, attenuated warmth that seems to say, "Enjoy me now; before you know it I'll be gone."

In other news, I was inspired to pull out my XF DVDs yesterday, looking for something to keep me occupied while I rode the exercise bike. For whatever reason, I chose the ep Unusual Suspects, one that never particularly did much for me when it first came out, and which I haven't re-viewed more than once or twice. I was surprised, having been away from the show for quite a while now, at how much I enjoyed it--the clever, economical way the story developed, how well all the pieces fit and the nice touches of visual storytelling and musical highlighting. I think when I first saw this ep, it wasn't the story I wanted to see, since I was more focused on the core characters and eager to find out what would happen to them next. At that point, the minor episodes sometimes seemed like roadblocks, or like someone tall sitting in front of you in a theater, blocking your view. But now I find I'm able to watch them and appreciate them for what they are. Nice.

Mid-Willamette Valley as seen from the old Rock Hill School

Last week I found myself facing the prospect of making a trip up the I-5 to a town about an hour north of here. Given that this is Oregon, and not heavily populated, this main north-south artery has only two lanes going in each direction, meaning that you're constantly having to pass strings of semi-trailers. I find it wearying in the extreme, and besides, the scenery along the freeway isn't all that interesting. So I pulled up Google Maps and plotted what looked like an interesting way to get from here to there while avoiding the freeway entirely.

It turned out to be a great trip. If you could use a quick break from whatever you're doing, feel free to come along.

Have fun!

Fall-blooming colchicum

I don't know about anyone else, but I've been spending far too much time at my desk recently (work projects.) However, having finished one this afternoon, I decided to head out and take a walk around the neighborhood. Everything was freshly washed from this morning's rain, which added urgency to the idea of getting out and enjoying the sunshine before the next bank of clouds would come in overhead. So I headed out, camera and umbrella in hand.

If you could use a break, too, feel free to come along and enjoy the scenery.

Here's something you may not know: a field lug of pears, dried, pretty much fits into a 7" tall jar (above.) I'm still trying to wrap my mind around that fact. What seems even more amazing at this point, though, is that there are no more lugs of pears or tomatoes lined up against the kitchen wall. Granted, there's one lug of tomatoes left in the garage, and a lug of apples in the kitchen, which will probably be dried, or if not, made into sauce. Still, peach season is definitely behind us now, as is pear--two items ticked off our list as we store up food against the coming winter. And the end of apple and tomato processing is definitely in sight, which is a relief since I think Jenny is finally reaching the food prep overload stage.


Distinctive blue-gray sweet meat squash at a local farm market.

We've had a few rain showers now, bookended by periods of warm weather, and the last few things in the garden are either ripening or being harvested as-is because they're not going to get any riper, like our little Yellow Baby watermelons, which are about six inches across and very refreshing, even if not as sweet as we would have liked them (they got a late start.) In the bed beside the driveway, we still have quite a few huge red onions to use as the need arises, and two rows of leeks that probably won't be fully mature until winter. Beside them, my giant complex of delicata squash is finally starting to die back and the squash are turning yellow as they should. My last count turned up 27 of them. They'll be welcome additions to cold weather dinners.



The flower garden is reaching a harvest point, too. I'm trying to clear out beds that have been covered with random weeds and a crop of late, self-seeded forget-me-nots that never bloomed, so that we can see what space we have available to plant spring bulbs. One of my biggest surprises this year was the 'Thai Silk' variety of California poppies (see pic above), which bloomed in frilly abandon for months and months in shades of pink, copper, yellow and orange. I've never seen so many flowers on a single bush before, and of course they have the traditional California poppy tolerance for dry conditions, a big plus for the sunny spot where I had them. I've saved as many seed heads as I can so I can spread them to other areas next year. If you have a hot, dry spot you're looking to fill with summer color, I highly recommend them.

Becoming more self-sufficient has meant living closer than ever to the seasons, but this seems to be a plus in the end. Just as we need all periods of the day/night cycle, living with the seasons nudges us to truly experience the character of each facet of the year rather than just letting it slip by at a distance. Canning and gardening have been family projects, too, weaving bonds of cooperation and memory that strengthen the fabric of our communal life.

Fall Creek, Lowell, OR

A very happy birthday to thimble_kiss! Wishing you inspiration, peace and beauty in the year ahead. {{{hugs}}}

The canning closet

The leaves on the trees may still be green, and the temperatures continue to sway between warm and hot, but this is definitely the season of preparation. The geese passing by overhead and the occasional dip into chilly mornings tell the tale: fall is approaching, even if by stealth. And so we can and freeze produce while squirrels in the backyard begin their time-worn ritual of burying nuts against winter's coming dearth.

The above shot of the canning closet was taken this morning. For those interested, the top shelf holds tomatoes, beets, peaches and pickles; the second, peaches; the third, beets; the fourth pears and the fifth, applesauce. We've barely started on the tomatoes; there's still a lug of apples to make into sauce and tomorrow afternoon we've been invited to a friend's place in the rolling hills 20 miles south of here to pick pears... which will be dried in the new food dehydrator. We're also deciding on where in the garage to locate a second canning closet.

In the interest of full disclosure I have to say that Jenny is the one principally responsible for the abundant display in the closet. I've helped with the apples, pears and peaches, but while I'm out here working on websites or doing other stuff, she's roasting tomatoes, blanching green beans for freezing, looking through books on canning and fruit drying, or making dinner. Yesterday I'm not sure she left the kitchen all day.

The hardest part of this effort at greater self-sufficiency is, of course, the time crush when everything seems to ripen at once and can't wait to be prepared until you happen to be in the mood. The flip side of the coin, however, is three-fold: amazingly tasty food you can't buy at any price in a store, safer food whose origins you know (and organic if possible), and the team effort/memory-making involved, which can last far longer than the colorful products we line up on the shelves at the end of the day.

For whatever reason, Cade and Con have never had to be nudged into green bean preparation. It seems to have a lure of its own, like the bucket of whitewash set beside Tom Sawyer's fence. Anytime we've got enough beans to freeze, you can find the three of us at the kitchen table (or outside in the shade of the walnut tree, as shown in the photo below) snipping ends and cutting beans into inch-long pieces. Later, Cade will work the apple peeler--an old-fashioned, low-tech device no kid of any age seems able to resist--and Jenny and I will chat while we peel pears or slip the skins off hot, blanched peaches and pack them into jars. When I was growing up, many long (and dare I say steamy) summer nights were spent in the kitchen canning, and all these years later I'm still reminded of those evenings spent with my parents while I'm sitting in front of a huge mound of apple peelings and the canner is bubbling away on the stove. I'm hoping the boys, too, will be storing up memories of time spent together and shared effort, substantial--and hopefully colorful--offerings that should help fill their life-closets as adults.

Today beside Fall Creek

Things have been hectic around here. There are the obvious causes: fruits and veggies to can or freeze and the garden to tend. But beyond that, web and graphic work has started knocking on my door in the last 4-5 weeks, and as more inquiries come in, I've found myself working on one website while scouting ideas for a flyer for another client, hastily putting up a portfolio on my own very-much-in-progress business website, creating an LLC for myself and designing myself a business card.

As a result, I've been spending far too much time sitting in the cottage in this chair (extraordinarily comfy though it may be), working away on the computer. Today was the first time in a while I'd felt like I could take a break, so I did, and Jenny, Cade, Con and I took off and drove to Fall Creek, within an hour's drive of here but, like so many places in Oregon, blessedly distant from civilization. It was so calming and rejuvenating to sit beside the broad, shallow stream and simply watch water flow over rocks (of which there were many), take in the sweet-tinged scent of forest air and look up at the towering trees all around. I know if I'd stayed here in town, I would never have been able to move my headspace completely from project-related stuff, but the forest was truly another world.

For quite a long time my interest in web design had languished. Facing the end of an income stream next year that I've depended on for quite a while, I knew I was going to have to find another source of income, and yet I wasn't sure web work was really it. Was I, I asked myself, only motivated to do it by default, because I had some background? That hardly seemed a strong--or reliable enough--motivator. But I started designing a homepage for the work, and though it took me an entire day to come up with something I was happy with, the process did make me refine my ideas of exactly what my niche was. And I saw that--surprise, surprise!--it was the same focus I've had for years: getting a message across clearly. Whether it's making a fictional character comprehensible, or bridging the gaps between my own and a foreign culture, or bringing out the uniqueness of a client's service, effective communication has always been my thing.

But I ran out of inspiration and the sitework languished. Until about four weeks ago, when an anticipated site job came in, followed by two inquiries out of the blue from people who had seen a site I'd designed and wanted sites of their own. More inquiries have come in since then (not all for web work--the requests seem to be broadening), and it's beginning to look very much like the way stories develop... for me, anyway. A glimmer of light and a few steps down the road as I see it leads to more inspiration, which lets me know I'm indeed on the right track. There's a curiosity, but not a sense of panic because I know the story's map is already complete; I simply have to take one step at a time, listen rather than push, and be willing to turn at those points where inspiration nudges in one direction or another.

Where will all this lead? At the moment I can't say. But the feeling is there, the road is opening up, and I've put on my traveling shoes.

A Shaasta daisy in the backyard

Though it's only the beginning of August and the corn and tomatoes in the yard are just starting to ripen, there are subtle signs of encroaching autumn. Maybe it's just my sensitive seasonal radar, fine-tuned over many years in Southern California, because there the only signs of autumn--even when you're well into the season--are subtle. There's a marginal crispness to the air, a slightly deeper blue tint to the sky, a handful of plants with leaves that turn color.

Here, the signs are different. A week or so ago near dusk, I heard the honking of Canada geese, a sound that's been absent from our skies for months. When they passed by, it was only two geese. But some days later, another honking heralded five or six geese, and two days ago nearly a dozen passed by overhead. Headed out of town to pick peaches on Tuesday, I noticed several big leaf maples decked out in deep yellow leaves, and last night, emerging from a meeting, the scent of raindrops on dusty pavement was the first hint of the outdoors to reach me. I opened the car's moon roof and drove home with random warm raindrops falling on me.

I can't say that I'm completely ready for fall; after all, there's that hectic period of canning and freezing, of late blueberry picking and trips out of town to lakes and waterfalls still ahead of us, and the watermelons haven't ripened yet. But I can see autumn edging in, a not-unwelcome shadow at the edge of the stage, reminding me not to waste the remaining weeks of summer, or take them for granted.

The hot weather has been moving the things in our garden right along, so here's some veggie spam.

Ducks on the Willamette a few evenings ago

The above is posted as a way to keep my mind off the fact that it's not even 1 p.m. yet and the temperature is already 96 degrees here (that's about 35.5 for those of you whose thermometers measure in Celsius.) Unfortunately, our temps don't peak until about 6 p.m., so we've got a ways to go. I'm planning on staying inside and looking at pictures of creeks and waterfalls and maybe even the ocean. :-)

Heading out onto the bike path, 6:30 a.m.

We've been having some hot weather (mid-90s), and as a result I've found myself retreating to the cottage and spending far too much time sitting here in this chair. By the time I go to bed, I can feel my body complaining that it hasn't had a chance to stretch or wear itself out. So this morning, waking up at 6:00, I decided to take advantage of the relative cool, as I did several days last week, and headed out to the river bike path. It was fresh and quiet... and scenic, as always. The river is always soothing to watch and listen to.

About a mile to the north I crossed at the Owosso bike bridge (no kidding: this thing has an actual cloverleaf--just for bikes and pedestrians) and headed along the east side of the river. Last winter's snowpack was lacking, so the river is lower than usual. Here and there little gravel bars have appeared mid-stream, along with the occasional tiny island. The gravel area in the picture below is one often enjoyed by ducks and geese.



Past the small rapids, I arrived at the Delta Ponds (below) and stopped to walk my bike so I wouldn't miss anything interesting (this is where the bike path goes right out across one of the ponds.) Two huge herons were sitting out in the water, as well as a number of ducks and a few Canada geese. I didn't spot any nutria or raccoons this time, though last week I did. The ponds are getting scummy now, as they always do this time of year, but interestingly enough, the ducks and geese seem to really like eating the mucky stuff, so I guess it's all good.

Past the ponds, I crossed the river via another bike bridge and pedaled back toward home, enjoying the trees, the gilmpses of the water and the trailside fields of dry grasses mixed wtih Queen Anne's lace. The ride--about 5 miles--was definitely worth it, a nice way to take advantage of the freshness of the day before the heat would creep back in.

Center of the yard as seen from the cottage

Near the center of this picture, Con is scooping water out of his little wading pool, which he'll use to water garden plants. The pool needs cleaning. Again. We cleaned it yesterday, but that was before the, er... frolicking that went on last night. Jenny said she was awakened about 3 a.m. by the sounds of splashing. It was dark outside, of course, but by the light of a solar lantern near the pool, she could see a white plastic cup that had been left outside being carried two and from the pool. And, as I said, there were the splashing noises, which evidently went on for a good half-hour. She couldn't make out the critter--or critters--involved, just their shadows. We suspect raccoons.

Beside the everpresent squirrels and birds that frequent our yard, we've also discovered that we have a small black snake with green stripes who's living in the woodpile (I startled him yesterday as he was sunning himself between the corn stalks) and a little rat who sneaks into the chickens' cage and digs for something below the water bowl. I'm keeping an eye on him, because I don't want a whole family of them, which would be problematic. So far, though, there's only the one. Con and I sat quietly under the apple tree for a while yesterday afternoon, positioned where we could watch him make his quick dashes to the water bowl.

Overhead, we've begun to see a few flights of geese recently. I'm not sure whether these are early returnees from Canada or just ones that have stayed to spend their summer here in Eugene. And occasionally we'll see a great blue heron fly past the yard. Once he even stopped for a few minutes in the neighbor's apple tree where we could admire him.

There may be downsides to living in such a treed area as this, that attracts wildlife the way it does, but I can't think at the moment of what they might be. Aside from making sure the hens are secure from raccoons at night, the local wildlife keeps things interesting, as well as reminding us that our little corner of the world is home to more than just members of our own species.

Poinsettia and shadow

When I was in grad school, I took a course in twentieth century Spanish culture taught by the famous Spanish philosopher Jose Luis Aranguren. Possessed of that typical Spanish anarchism at a personal level that automatically rebels against dictates laid down against a person, Aranguren abhored the idea of tests and flatly refused to give them in his classes. Instead, we were to write one paper, which could be on any topic we chose that was even tangentially related to the course material.

Because I'd lived in Madrid several years earlier, the topic that tickled its way into my mind was this: life in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39.) Though there were no books to be found on this topic, searching for material did lead me to my graduate advisor, one of the most fortunate coincidences of my life. However, my first stop in looking for pertinent material was my originally assigned advisor, a professor from the south of Spain who always appeared perfectly put-together: carefully-tailored suit, sweater vest, tie and meticulously polished shoes. Never a hair out of place. He was probably between 45 and 50 at the time.

As we sat in his office, he admitted that he knew of no books on my chosen topic and urged me to go see his friend, another department professor who'd been in the thick of the government of the late Republic during the war. Then he paused, shifted in his chair and told me the following story.

He had been been a boy of six when the civil war began. His family lived in Granada, and on the opening day of the war, without warning the family awoke to tanks in the streets. His mother, sensing the direction that things would go, sent her six-year-old son out with instructions to go to the corner panaderia (bread store) and purchase whatever bread he could before the store closed, as she sensed it soon would. He recalled the fear he felt going out into the near-deserted street with the ominous tanks. But though he ran all the way to the panaderia, he arrived to find it already closed.

Knowing his family needed bread, he went another block, hoping to find some at another panaderia, but when he reached it, it too was closed. Though by this time he was very much afraid, he went on, perhaps several more blocks, to a third store and arrived just in time to buy the last loaf they had. Cradling it in his arms, he started quickly for home. He was proud at having finally found the bread his mother had sent him for. But as he hurried through an alley, he encountered a man coming toward him. The man snatched little Enrique's loaf of bread away.

"What did you do?" I asked.

"I bit him on the leg," the professor replied. He shrugged. He was only a small boy, incapable of fighting the grownup who had stolen his loaf. He went home empty-handed.

I've often thought of this incident, and the sharing of it, because it was a gift on several levels. While it clearly added to my understanding of the first-person reality of the war, it was also an unexpected glimpse into the interior of a formal, proper man. At the time I was roughly half his age, and the act of offering me his six-year-old self is one I will always appreciate... and remember with a smile. Beyond that, there's so much to be said for the richness of personal narratives in critical times. History books give you names and statistics, but not the living flesh and pounding blood of the people who lived through thosee events. Personal narratives, like those of Laura Ingalls Wilder or Anne Frank, make the events real to us.

And yet so many of these stories slip away, unrecorded. They become vague memories, and then faulty memories, and finally they disappear beneath the dust of time and matters of more urgent concern. This recounting is an effort to save this small gem from oblivion. The war that occasioned it has been fought, left behind, analyzed and set on the shelf. But the story of a six-year-old facing down a mean adult in a whitewashed alley brings that period immediately back to vivid life.

Rainbow trout at the fish hatchery beside Leaburg Lake

Hmm, the pic above seems appropriate because today, in the middle of an Oregon July, we had... a thunderstorm, the only real thunderstorm I've experienced in our three years here. And pouring rain. (Usually, once the heat hits, we have clear skies right through until mid-September.) Actually, the rain was welcome, because it means we won't have to water for a few days now. Tomorrow the clouds should begin to lift, as we await the arrival of Jenny's parents for a week-long vacation visit.

Looking back, it's hard to believe that Aaron, Jenny and the boys have been with us for nearly a year already. And aside from the sharp sadness of losing the baby a month after their arrival, the year has been filled with busyness, laughter, shared projects and progress. Part of the idea of a commitment to a shared lifestyle involved making our family more self-sufficient and shedding those manufactured/paid-for things we really don't need. And we've been succeeding at that. The fast food forays have been replaced by home-cooked meals (for which I can take no real credit; Jenny makes everything from scratch, even her own pita breads to hold the souvlakis that come off the grill); Aaron and Ben comprise a team that takes care of things such as gutter-cleaning; Paul and Ben have helped wean Cade from a steady diet of video games and have introduced him to both the unabridged dictionary and the joys of Hamlet; and I'm able to help occupy Con when he'd otherwise be getting in his mother's hair.

Jenny (who, incidentally, would make the ideal pioneer wife--thifty, hardworking, patient and resourceful), started seeds early to get our vegetable garden growing, when I probably would have thought about it but not followed through. For months she tended seeds and seedlings that seemed to grow slowly; now, suddenly, everything is exploding in the summer heat, today's gloom and rain storm excepted. We've had fresh (shelling) peas and a crop of beets already. Now green beans are ripening, we've gotten our first few squash and cucumbers, and onions are standing tall in the side plot... though that's partly because the soil there is so hard that instead of growing into the ground, they're rising to the surface. We have tomatoes setting fruit, and a spaghetti squash that grew from the size of an apricot to the sze of a football in about three days. Our little corn patch is taller than we are now, and we've been getting a steady supply of raspberries and now marionberries (a local blackberry variant) from the vines in the rear of the yard.

Self-suffiency doesn't come without effort, however. We hang our laundry outside now, but in contrast to the chore it always seemed when I had to do it as a teenager--and I hung a lot of clothes on the line--now it makes for a really nice break from whatever else I might be working on. We also plan on doing a lot of canning later in the summer. To date we've made quite the quantity of strawberry freezer jam, along with strawberry-rhubarb jam, stewed apricots, and cherry, blueberry and raspberry-marionberry pie fillings. Cade, a former jam-hater who was converted by my strawberry freezer jam several years ago, was right in the thick of the jam processing this time, prepping and smashing berries and mixing up the sugar/pectin mixture. He's also pretty good with a cherry stoner, but then who wouldn't want to play with this very specialized, low-tech gadget? It's incredibly cool. In the process, the boys are learning what it takes to prepare these fruit items (and we've picked most of them ourselves; luckily, Oregon is full of you-pick farms), and what real, ripe fruit tastes like.

I've also noticed that great bonus of the communal lifestyle kicking in: we do things together. Paul, Ben and Jenny have been working on prepping a pathway we're going to make behind the garage, Con helps me clean the bathrooms (well, partly because Con loves to do anything adults are doing), and sometimes I'll go into the house before dinner to find Paul helping Jenny roll up eggrolls or preparing the bits of dough for baturas (little fried breads from India that are OMG delicious.) At night, you'll find Ben and Cade in the kitchen doing the dishes and chatting.

I think about the separate, compartmentalized lives that so many people live these days simply because technology has made us, for the most part, no longer dependent on each other (we all sit on the bus with our own headphones on, absorbed in individual worlds) and am glad to be a part of this busy household where give-and-take and shared experiences--even if simple ones--offer a richness I wouldn't trade away for anything.

View from Tire Mountain, near Westfir, Oregon

Yesterday I went on my first mountain hike (as opposed to the hike you'd take, say, along a river or through a lowland forest) with Hiking Friend. I'm currently processing the pictures, but in the meantime here's a view I hope you'll find inspirational.