MamaStories

We’re moving ourselves and the rest of our stuff this weekend. Then we need to unpack, figure out which boiler and water heater to buy and who should install it. Then insulation. Then select the wood stove (any suggestions? the choice on the market is overwhelming, but we don’t want to go pellets).

And that’s it for the big things in the house. Some will unfortunately have to wait till next year: the solar water heater, for instance.

Then, finally, we’ll be turning our attention to the garden. Those.7 acres - isn’t it lovely, that though you don’t have a whole acre really, you still get to say point-seven-acres?

As I look at all that outdoor space, my big vision is looking too, over my shoulder. And I keep telling myself: keep the dream big, but take manageable steps. First things first: get the soil ready for next year.

As for the edible garden. Where and how to clear the stones and the brush and the saplings and the poison ivy for next season’s veggie and fruit garden? Where to get compost and mulch? Should we top it all up with some topsoil? What to fence in? Should we bring down some of the larger, more lovely trees to “make” sunlight?

As for the front yard. Due to the huge new leach field, most of it won’t be used for edible  or deep-rooted plants, so what to grow there then?

And what to grow in the “relaxation” and “entertainment” garden round back?

Dreaming big…

Almost.
70% of our stuff, perhaps. We’re moving the rest and ourselves on Saturday. Then comes the tedious job of unpacking…

But Amie loved “driving” the truck! Not as much as her Mama did, though.

The 4 robins have pretty much outgrown their nest, but I haven’t seen them fly out yet.

There are two little woodpeckers like these. Neither has a red spot on the head, so I think they’re both adult females. They’re so small they are probably Downy (not Hairy) Woodpeckers. But the Hairy Woodpecker is probably around as well: I’ve heard its very rapid, almost smooth rapping sound, like a phone buzzing almost. Very unlike the slow and much louder tok-tok-tok of the big pileated woodpecker.

This now is a little bully. Can anyone tell me what kind of bird it is? A juvenile Common Grackle? It has that large tail… He chases away the cardinals and even fought the two Downy Woodpeckers to eat at his heart’s content.

And lastly this little guy I misidentified earlier. Our neighbor pointed him/her out as a Orchard Oriole, not (as I thought) Yellow-throated Vireo or possibly a Yellow Warbler.

We also spotted a Carolina Wren with a huge green caterpillar in it beak.

I started a bird list in the sidebar. Watch it grow!

Our work-weekend at the new house was cut short by the inclement weather. The humidity reached 91%, which made painting impossible. We decided not to spent another night there and to come “home” (”to our old home,” is how Amie appropriately puts it) to start packing.

While we were there we took stock of our woodpile. Our neighbor had chopped most of the wood and thrown the logs into the yard. It was such a pleasure stacking it and seeing the pile grow… such a pleasure in fact that we couldn’t stop and piled it too high. Now it feels a bit wobbly, so we’ll move some of the top layers to a second pile.

The robin’s eggs hatched. The four chicks were probably a day or two old: eyes still closed, and not a chirp, just wide-open mouths on long necks. The robins made a poor real estate choice when they built their nest under our car port roof, because each time we drive up or approach the car, the Mama Robin flees (and sits in the tree, calling out in alarm). So we parked the car further off to give them some peace. Both parents did nothing but hunt for food and feed the babies. Amie would have been at the window and watched them all day long, if it hadn’t been for the fact that we had to hold her up for her to see them.

Right next door to the Robin’s nest, wasps were busy building a nest. It’s very small (about 3 inches in diameter), as yet. We’ll have to take care of it soon: it’s too close to slamming car doors and loud toddler sounds. Any recommendations?

To many of you it might seem like not much, but to DH and me it looks like the foundation of paradise!

Some trees (in the background: 1 large white oak, 1 smaller birch and 1 smaller maple) had to be felled to make way for the new septic system. Their remains have been lying around for a while now. A couple of times DH and I stood in front of the ax, maul and chainsaw displays at the local Home Depot… speechless. Neither of us have any experience with firewood. I’ve thrown a log into an open fireplace maybe once in my life. So we were intimidated.

Luckily our neighbor turns out to be a firewood seller and a really nice guy. He came to our rescue with his chainsaw and also showed DH how to use the splitting maul.

Amie was quite impressed. She loved to help, carrying the logs to the pile, “like a big girl!” (sorry, I didn’t catch it on camera). She knows the difference now between “tree” and “wood” (*).

Installing a good wood stove into or near our fireplace is one of the priorities. The downed trees will make for at least two cords of firewood, which might be cured sufficiently by the end of October. There are some stacks of old firewood rotting around the property, and we might be able to save some of that too. I’m thinking we’ll need three cords…

Oh, life is good and nature provides!

(*) one of those fundamental Aristotelian distinction, so easily and naturally applicable to the world, as Aristotle always is!

Ay! I am hurting. My whole body is aching this morning and it feels good.

Yesterday we sanded the floors some more (1200 sq. f. of beautiful red oak), vacuumed, tack-cloth-d, smashed a heavy storm window, sanded the dents in the floor, vacuumed and tackcloth-d again, then put on the first layer of polyurethane (water based = less vocs). We didn’t stain, the floor is so beautifully blond. Then, waited, sanded again, vacuumed and tack-cloth-d again, and put on the second layer.

Today: sand, clean, third layer, sand clean, fourth and hopefully final layer. Also pick up a table saw that DH found on Craigslist and maybe we’ll also have time to visit nearby Walden Pond. Or a visit to Home Depot (yeay!) to choose the colors for the walls (we’re going to try FreshAire = no vocs).

Often while taking a break I stand looking at the garden to survey all the work that will be necessary there, this summer and next spring. The septic leach field is still a disaster: not yet ready for a cover crop. The subsoil stones the contractor brought to the surface all over the property are sore on my eyes. There is poison ivy in the future vegetable patch. We have too many trees, affording only a 4 hour of sun, yet I couldn’t part with any of them… And then I catch myself smiling. One thing at a time.

Next week, during some stolen afternoons and evenings, we’ll finalize the paint choices, and next weekend we’ll start painting. Then a big cleanup. Then: move in! maybe we should do a major yard sale first! We’re moving into a bigger space but I would rather it were an emptier, cleaner and clearer one…

We’re back from a week in Toronto, mostly recuperating at my Aunt and Uncle’s place. Soon, I promise, there will be news about Amie’s now incessant “why?” question, her need for getting naked to go “swimming” at the most inopurtune moments, potty-training (almost complete), and more puzzling (with 24 pieces) and drawing (clothes are now in the picture as well!). And maybe I’ll reveal some about my novel (been getting requests)…

But first, a question to my readers (well, some of them, the farmers and gardeners in particular)…

One of our first priorities at the house is sowing a cover crop on the soil that was disturbed and left bare by the installation of the septic system. A lot of that beautiful dark humus-like topsoil - years if not decades of leaves had been allowed to stay and degrade where they fell - has unfortunately been turned under, and in many places what is at the surface now is light brown subsoil.

So: what should I sow to protect that bare soil from washing or blowing away, and to prime it with new organic matter and nitrogen for growing vegetables, herbs, berry bushes and fruit trees come next spring?

Crimson clover, hairy vetch? Rye? A combination of any or all of these? I don’t mind resowing as the seasons change from warm to cold. I’ll be cutting it down with a scythe and turning it under with a fork, but we’re only talking 0.4 or so acres.

We closed yesterday. It was pouring outside. The lawyers and the agents sat with us at that big “conference table”: witnessing. At the end we made out a check to the seller for the leftover oil in the tank: $1600! How ironic. We are planing all kinds of alternative energy sources to avoid oil consumption, but apparently it comes with the house! Let’s just say that, once we’re done with our work, that amount of oil will have to last us two if not three years.

Then we drove to our house, opened our door with our key, and turned on the water. Played with the taps - it was a way of appropriating it, of making it “appropriate”: our own. We walked through, chatting, noticing new things, planning. We kept an eye on the time, the $15/hour for the babysitter time…

We finally felt how exhausted we were, from the stress of this whirlwind, needlessly complicated buying process, as well as from the bug that Amie brought home several weeks ago. She’s still fighting it, but is frustrated by the cough that wrecks her sleep. I “adopted” it a week ago, and DH was coming down with right at that moment.

It was strange, finally leaving the house, knowing that it will be two weeks before we return. This week is crazy busy at DH’s job and next week we’re off to Toronto for nine days. Then we’ll begin. Then… Seems like we’ve been waiting (postponing?) for decades.

The novel is on hold while I recover and while Amie is home from daycare for the second week in a row. I am so close. I almost finished chapter 13, after which I was going to send it out to my trial readers. That’ll have to wait as well.

But we’re not waiting, really, are we. We’re planning, dreaming, knowing, now, that it won’t be long.

We’re closing on Monday. We’re going to do this! And even before it begins, I feel the urgent need to document it all. Hopefully I’ll have the time to write here more often again.

Last week a new septic system was put in, which tore up the entire front and back yard. We knew about this of course, and welcomed it - it allows for the 2 bedroom to become a 3 bedroom if we wish. The result saved us some work: it made the sloping front yard a little more gradual, got rid of lots of scrawny trees (we requested the wood was left), so cleared space (and light) for the garden. Psychologically, with “the woods” removed, it is now easier for me to see the garden.

But the place looks so violated: all that bare earth! It’s not my own yet and I feel for it already. Also, the leach field we now realize is humongous (looks it, in any case), and as I balk from growing veggies on it, my first reaction was to lament the loss of space. I know it’s only a small loss, really, only a small area in the grand scheme of our almost-an-acre. I know my perplexity has more to do with my reaction to all that space and the question: what to do with it. Or rather, where to do it all?

The space as it exists now overwhelms any kind of vision for the future.

As for the space that exists… With all that emptiness after the construction of the septic system, the garden in front is one, large, amorphous space, with a dense cluster of trees (some mature, some not) to the left and a path of destruction all the way up to the house.

In the back and to the sides, there are unrelated pockets of space, segmented by little stone walls and trees and most obviously by ugly, metal fences. They cut the space apart and even exclude land that turns out to belongs to the property too.

Add to that the contents: so many trees we’d like to keep, so many types of soil and microclimates, most of which are unknowns as yet.

I approach this torn-up, fragmented, schizophrenic space with my equally fragmented vision.

There are so many functions that we want our garden to fulfill: vegetable garden, herb garden, bird garden, insect garden, orchard, hedges and paths, play space, discovery space, wild space, calm space…

And so many elements to incorporate. Things that are already there: the huge masonry BBQ (make it into an oven?), the old stone ring, which we’d like to keep. Structures to be built: a root cellar, Amie’s play structures (swing, seesaw, jungle gym), a little house for her (cob?), fences, and walls to train fruit trees on, a green house, a composting place, a woodcutting and curing area, maybe a tiny pond…

But standing there today, among the budding trees and the birdsong and the rustling of all those fall leaves that were left there (leaf mould!), and surveying the front from the house on the hill, I had a vision that clicked into place! And that’s exactly what we need: to make space into place, then to make that place into home.

It began with a path, a wall and a gate. Exactly the three main spatial elements that aren’t spatial themselves at all, but that divide and integrate and open space.

It’s a single meandering path that runs down the slope. It meets a small wooden gate in a thick and a low, curving wall.

The path is terraced by wooden dividers and covered with stones, all found on the property (oh many stones!). Over it at intervals are trellises and arbors, and along it (invading the garden space), benches, a birdbath. The wall is made of cob and the larger stones, painted a deep, warm brown. Along it on the inside grow the fruit trees. On the other side is the street. It is not meant for privacy: any person of average height can look over it. It is meant as an invitation.

The gate does the inviting. It sits in a higher, thicker part of the wall, with space above it for a cob sculpture, and generous chinks for preliminary glimpses of what lies behind it. It is a wooden, painted gate, rounded on top. There is perhaps a bell - with a clapper, maybe a chain (and a notice to the effect of “bell is optional”). There’s a niche for the mailbox next to it, and some flowers or a little object. Maybe a bench, on the outside, for weary passers-by.

It says: home. We live here, we are native here. And you are welcome.

Maybe I’ll draw it for you sometime. Maybe I’ll even get to build it!

Things have really come to a head here at MamaStories. DH and I (and occasionally Amie too) looked for a house with land in one particular community close to Boston, and after exactly a month and about 16 properties later, we found what we were looking for. We made an offer, got a counteroffer, accepted the counteroffer, and we were off!

0.7 acres is suddenly quite intimidating. I am sort of disappointed but also kind of relieved that we’re not going to do any landscaping or big-time gardening this growing season. We’re too late (we;ll move in at the end of June), and will stick to exploring the land, improving the soil, and making lots of plans. But I did download and order heaps of seed and plants catalogs. I will need the advice of many of you readers!

And we want to concentrate on the house first, which needs insulating as well as a new heating and water system. So many exciting alternatives out there! Ever heard of geothermal? Imagine my excitement when I got Lehman’s Non-Electric catalog in the mail today, with much homesteadin’ goodness.

Also, after going through all that trouble finding a preschool for Amie here in Brookline, I’m going through all that trouble again, but on a much shorter notice, in a place I don’t know much about.

Meantime I was and am working on the last couple of chapters of the novel. The prospect of shopping for an agent and sending the manuscript into the big bad world is on my mind every day now. My faith in the book oscillates across the board in fell swoops left and right, up and down.

We’re not there yet, but close, very close!