Intruder Alert

Ever since our front yard began to take on the unmistakable look of a job site, I've been more paranoid than usual about drawing the attention of wandering no-goodniks.  Our neighborhood had a little rash of break-ins this spring/summer, and tools were a primary target.  Plus, even with the back still open to the elements, the box is a lot drier and cozier than the rest of the great outdoors these days--an additional attractive feature.

But I don't have to worry anymore, because yesterday morning my fears were realized.  Bob and I had just started working on the rig, when my tape measure flushed a confused (and probably hungover) cedar waxwing from the corner of the door sill.  He'd taken a colorful dump full of partially-digested laurel berries on the threshold, and disgorged one more for good measure while I was wrestling the glass doors open to let him out.  Bob had observed a whole bevy of them whooping it up in the laurel hedge the day before; we assume that this poor sot conked out early and was abandoned by his fellow revelers to sleep it off in the shelter of our motorhome. 

I wish I'd had the presence of mind to snap a photo of his little 'hostess gift', but alas, my cleaning reflexes outpace my archival reflexes.  Stains, you know.  But the memory of the incident had me chuckling throughout the rest of the day.  It's nice when one's worries come true in a harmlessly absurd fashion.

The Great Escape

October is racing by, and we are racing right along with it.  So far this month we have celebrated my retirement from the corporate world, trapped, spayed and nursed a pair of feral cats, and made great strides on our Motor Home.  Yes, we are joining the ranks of the Outwardly Mobile!  Kind of a retirement tradition, you know?

Seriously though, Bob bought a Ford CF 7000 flatbed a few years back with the intention of turning it into a mobile living space.  He was tired of getting jerked around by flaky/controlling/weirdo landlords, and both of us were loving the Willamette valley summers but longing to skip the winters.  Bob has lived comfortably in RVs in the past, and we have seasonal neighbors with a beautiful old bus whose snowbird-lifestyle consumes us with envy.  The opportunity to get out of Dodge was lacking, however, until Bob took a much-needed trip to sunny Mariposa, CA last March and met this guy:

Next slide, please.

Er, sorry--the guy just to the left.  The one kneeling down.

Mark and his family had just purchased 80 acres of mostly-undeveloped land in Mariposa, with the intention of creating a food-growing, animal-raising community and permaculture learning center there.  He and Bob hit it off immediately while touring the property, and began talking buildings.  Mark was very excited to hear about Bob's locally-sourced, low-impact, DIY approach to strawbale building, and before the visit was over he had invited Bob to move down there and fulfill his dream: document the creation of beautiful, comfortable, truly sustainable strawbale structures; pass the knowledge on to as many others as possible; and, if we chose to stay, become part of a fun and caring community.

When Bob returned home with the news, it sounded too perfect to be true.  Through the magic of Facebook photos, I began to fall in love with the family and the property.  At the same time, my job satisfaction was deteriorating faster than plywood in a pond.  We visited Meher Haven together in July, and my concerns about the details evaporated in the warmth of the lovely, lovely people we met in that beautiful place.  It felt like home.

Mark offered us the use of an existing cottage on the property, which would have enabled us to move more or less immediately.  But our eagerness to get down there and get building was tempered by the lure of convenience and freedom that our own motorhome could provide.  Bob has been dreaming of designing his own motorhome for quite some time, and I was concerned about easing the transition for our 15-year old cat, who becomes a howling demon of destruction within 10 minutes inside his car-crate.  So we bought a box for the truck, and began making some drawings.

In the beginning...

The box in its original form, with experimental window positioning.

On paper, we worked out how we could fit all our needs into the space in a way that wouldn't feel as cramped as most RVs do.  Of course, "planning" has limited usefulness when tackling a large, complex project that is completely new to you.  The result of this is that while preparing a home for our new life at Meher Haven, we are also preparing yours truly for community living by getting me more accustomed to a go-with-the-flow, plan-as-you-go work style.  As uncomfortable as this is for my rigid Virgo brain, it's been embarrassingly obvious for some time that I need to learn some flexibility.  So I guess I'm ready?

Our ability to use natural and reclaimed materials for this project is somewhat limited by space and time constraints.  The box is approximately 8'x8'x20', which is just big enough to comfortably (we hope) contain a kitchen, tiny wet bath, minimal storage, and a living/sleeping/eating area.  There isn't a lot of extra space inside the box to devote to insulation, and legal constraints on the outer dimensions of the vehicle seemed to preclude insulating from the outside. 

Since Mariposa gets quite hot in the summer and cold enough in the winters, Bob chose to use an insulation with maximum R-value per unit thickness: everyone's pal, rigid foam.  I suggested that stuffing the walls with wool could be just as insulative and probably more fireproof, but with a long list of subsequent steps waiting in the wings and the autumn rains looming on the horizon, Bob was unenthusiastic about trying to source enough wool to fill the wall and ceiling cavities.  I'm filing this idea away for next time, though.

Ziggy Stardust's motorcoach.

On top of this foam layer will come a couple inches of straw packed in behind chicken wire, then an earth plaster layer over that.  Since earth plasters dry best when they dry slowly (and drying is a very, very slow process around here this time of year..), we'll wait to plaster until after we've driven the whole dog-and-pony show down to the new digs.  An earth plaster floor will add even more thermal mass, helping to keep the Home cool in the summer and warm when the low winter sun soaks into the clay.  In the meantime, we'll be living with the original oak flooring that the box came with; actually pretty nice wood, but sealed between the planks with four different colors of caulk.  C'est la vie.  We really like the warm color of the walls in our current living room, so we're hoping to approximate it with the earth plaster:

This photo also highlights the biggest impediment to a truly scaled-down lifestyle--books and records.

Happily, the couch (shown above) that we bought from our neighbors for $50 last summer is also a mysteriously comfy hide-a-bed.  It will serve double-duty in the Home; triple if you count "king-sized cat perch".  Because we are lucky enough to live near several recycling/architectural salvage centers, other sweet secondhand acquisitions include:

• super-deluxe RV windows--WITH SCREENS--originally from Monaco Coach up in Coburg.  Purchased at BRING Recycling Center in Eugene.
• all doors, exterior and interior.  These came from Craigslist and from the ReBuilding Center in Portland.
• lower kitchen cabinets; these needed some alteration, but Bob was able to use the leftover doors on the upper cabinets that he built from scratch.  Purchased at Habitat for Humanity's Eugene RESTORE.
• lovely, lovely granite for countertops.  (ReBuilding Center; boy howdy, did we dig through some UGLY rock to find these babies.)
• a nice big ceramic sink.  Those of you who are good at math have already figured out that we're not very concerned about weighing this vehicle down too much.

Reclaimed lower cabinets, with extra doors used on custom upper cabinets.  And a sneak peek at the wet bath-in-progress!

Of course, lots and lots and LOTS of things have had to be purchased new.  The rigid foam.  Lumber.  Tile backer.  Plumbing and electrical bits.  My #1 piece of advice to anyone embarking on a project of this scale is to live within a half-mile of Lowe's.  I shudder to imagine how cranky Bob would be by now if he had to drive all the way out to Jerry's Hardware a minimum of once per day, instead of just around the corner.

The upshot is that labor couldn't be cheaper.  I try to keep my foreman in hot meals and sweet treats, and the proper windows open so he can hear the stereo.  I really can't express how much wonder and admiration for Bob I experience during every day of this project.  How can one person know how to DO all this stuff??  Even more than his cabinetry/plumbing/electrical prowess, his creativity and sense of esthetics truly boggle the mind.  Once the lower cabinets were in and the big window and double doors were cut we could finally start to feel the space, and he said to me, "How about a curved ceiling?"  Brilliant.  And then he figured out how to make it happen.  (I'm still not sure how.  Some of the cuts appear to have required magic.)

Tiny corner ripped off of 2x4s, using table saw kung-fu.

Allow me another example of Bob-genius.  The wet-bath that we're building is truly tiny; less than 3'x4' and minus a corner.  So what does Bob think of to do with this itsy-bitsy space?  PUT A BIG, EXPANSIVE WALL MURAL IN IT:

Imagine how much warmer the shower would feel with this surrounding you on three sides.

Amazing.  It should arrive today, I hope--OHMIGOD the UPS guy just delivered it!!!  Gotta go!  Stay tuned for tropical updates!

Feral Follies

The origin of suffering is attachment.

the Second Noble Truth

A lovely Labor Day weekend trip by train afforded me the luxury of immersing myself in Peter Matthiessen's classic The Snow Leopard.  I picked the book out of my sweetheart's collection more or less at random, and was delighted to find myself drawn in completely by the first few pages.  Little did I suspect how much this engrossing, deeply personal account of the author's mis/adventures in Zen Buddhism would inform the week to come.  This blog originated as a means of documenting my garden-related projects, but I'm going to use it today for a more stereotypically bloggy purpose: Tortured Introspection.  

Please fasten your seatbelts.

In my defense, this post IS project-related.  At the root of my suffering is the abrupt disruption of a task (like 95% of all my suffering), unrelated to gardening, but also very much tied to the seasons... Kitten Season.  (Dunh dunh dunnnh!)

Like Matthiessen and his expedition partner, the great George Schaller, I too have spent many weeks stalking and attempting to observe a wary colony of wild cats.  Far from the wilderness of the upper Himalaya, my subjects of study inhabit the industrial wasteland in which I am currently employed.  One of our company buildings abuts a narrow, fenced-off alleyway that has been home to a number of feral Felis catus for many years.  A colleague and I completed a successful Trap-Neuter-Return project back in 2009, but, in her legendary abhorrence of vacuum, Nature has replaced these original cats one by one with a new cast of fully-reproductive characters.  Since all were skittish adults by the time we noticed, taming anyone seemed fully out of the question.  Instead, I began plotting to repeat our previous gameplan: trap, spay/neuter, recovery, and release back into their original turf to manage the rodents and, hopefully, discourage fertile newcomers.

Then came the kittens.

Fuzzy bottoms and all.

One black-and-white queen ("Bess") kicked the other adult cats out of the area and began raising her six tiny fuzzies right under our noses--er, under our shed.  The kitties were shy but curious, and still plenty young enough to be socialized; no more than three or four weeks old when I first saw them in August.  "Lord," I groaned, channeling my best Jonah, "NO.  We are moving out of state in two months.  It's canning season.  I have a half-marathon in three weeks.  I'm trying to wrap things up at work.  A pack of wild kittens in the spare bedroom on top of a mass-trapping project is THE LAST THING that I need right now."  As usual, the reply was silent and internal, bypassing my plugged ears and la-la-la-la: "One.  Day.  At a time." 

Okay then.

Getting to know food, getting to know all about food...

I counted four little calicos and two tuxedos; klutzy, bleary-eyed charmers all.  The real heartbreaker was the runt, a tiny black tuxedo with one forepaw turned under like a gorilla.  Our lone smoker in that building, whose affinity for cats and regular trips outside make him my "eyes on the street", expressed his worries to me about Tiny Gorilla Tuxedo.  "That little guy, he's not going to make it," he said.  With all the bravado of a novice trapper I assured him, "He sure wouldn't out here.  But I'm gonna catch 'im."

I stocked up on traps, stinky wet cat food, and spare bed sheets.  I planned the transformation of our second bedroom into a kitten-resistant containment unit.  ("Kitten-proof" is just as mythical as "child-proof", and for the same reasons.)  I worked out a trapping scheme; Bess and babies first, then the other adults as they deduced her absence and began returning to the feeding station.  I researched kitten trapping, which requires some different methods and materials.  I obtained permission from my colleagues to turn their shed into a temporary recovery area for the adult cats after their gender neutrification surgeries.  And, of course, I fell in love with my furry quarry.  I fed them, talked to them, and observed them every day.  I began to imagine having them in my home, sharing with my sweetheart all the joys and agonies of kitten foster-parenting, until that dreamed-of future seemed as real as the present.  Finally, I wrote in my calendar right after my return to town after Labor Day: "Trap Kittens."

Labor Day evening, I rode over to set out food and water at the usual time.  The feeding station was desolate.  No Bess.  No kits.  I peered down the alleyway through the fencing, back to the winter shelter that I built for our original colony three years ago.  Reclining on the roof in the alpha-cat spot was Jackie, one of the adult tuxedos whom Bess had evicted weeks earlier.  The sight of him confirmed what my foolish, grasping heart already sensed: she was gone. 

Bess, getting accustomed to entering the trap.

Visualizing The Outcome has long been a noble truth among athletes, businessfolk, and the motivational-speaking set.  And there are certainly times when focusing on one's desire until it becomes more tangible than the present seems to make it manifest.  As a master of tunnel vision, I can personally attest that completing an arduous degree program, crossing the finish line of a long race, or getting back the cleaning deposit on an apartment are all situations in which a burning focus on the outcome is a highly effective tool.

But not every problem is a nail.  The hammer approach that works so well on the world of Tasks tends to send my fellow beings--be they loved ones, prospective employers, or wild animals--running for the hills.  Cats, like humans, are usually more attracted to a spirit of calm, benevolent acceptance, regardless of outcome.  (Is there a pill for this now?  Relevant comments welcome.)  And they react pretty much the same way that humans do to when the "I'm here to help" song-and-dance gets too enthusiastic.

Only about half of feral kittens reach adulthood, and their subsequent life (of an unaltered cat especially) is usually nasty, brutish and short.  Since they see humans as predators, ferals like mine who live in an urban setting spend much of their lives afraid, apart from having limited natural resources like clean drinking water.  In light of all this, it's kind of hard for me to keep my blood pressure low about these damn cats.  Working with animals in trouble only binds me to their outcome by, oh, the very STRINGS OF MY SOUL.  Which, I guess, makes it a pretty good exercise in freedom from desire.  Kind of like how boot camp is a great way to lose ten pounds.

My heart tears at the thought of Bess' little ones living and dying in the asphalt jungle.  I wanted so much to offer them a better life, able to love and trust humans who would give them a safe and healthy place to call home.  But my all wanting is neither here nor there.  Mother cats have their own agenda.  She may have moved them due to our excessive attentions, or for one of another myriad possible reasons.  I may get another chance to trap her and her babies, or I may not.  All I have, right now, is the choice to either accept Things As They Are, or to cry into my beer. 

One day at a time.  I'll try acceptance tomorrow.

"If the snow leopard should manifest itself, then I am ready to see the snow leopard.  If not, then somehow (and I don't understand this instinct, even now) I am not ready to perceive it...

and in the not-seeing, I am content."

Peter Matthiessen

The Snow Leopard

Whuff, it must be summer; there's just no other explanation for how fast the weeks are flying by.  True to form, the Willamette Valley finally started getting its first true hot weather in July.  We left town for one week in the middle of the month, during which time EVERYTHING in the garden doubled in size.  I had several happy dreams while on vacation about harvesting large, luscious summer squashes, and they all came true as soon as we got home.

As advertised (and possibly due to their cramped 5-gallon quarters), the Cavili and Patio Star plants are remaining fairly compact, but producing nicely.  I had my first experience with blossom end rot, which was quickly vanquished with a foliar spray and top dressing of discarded calcium carbonate samples from work.  I'm not sure that plain ol' ground limestone can actually be taken up through leaves, but I was panicking.  They didn't seem to mind, anyway.

With the image of sadly shriveled little zucchs burned into my brain, will I forget about the importance of calcium and steady watering during fruit production in future years?  Unlikely.  Since my secondary Goal in the Garden this season was to get as many rookie mistakes out of the way as possible, I'm feeling pretty good about this little blunder.  Progress!

I'm glad that our tomatoes are only just beginning to ripen, because the basil and blackberries are keeping me pretty busy.  The small stand of canes that I nearly tore out in May to keep them from swallowing the raspberry patch are producing an embarrassment of enormous, juicy berries.  The nearby compost and llama poo piles are not hurting them one bit!

Operation Pinch That Basil is a resounding success.  Evidence is presented timelapse-style:

Pinched to the point of embarrassment

Three weeks later: Huzzah!

Chasing the Sun

One of the biggest perqs of the house that we're renting is its large, verdant lot, screened in almost completely by blackberries, laurel, and bamboo.  The back yard has seen a lot of pleasant picnic lunches this month, requiring no more trouble than walking out the kitchen door with your plate to the blanket on the lawn.  Pretty damn decadent.

The same shade that dapples the lawn, however, also dapples darn near every other spot on the property.  Three very large trees (and several smaller ones) guard the southern perimeter.  Our favorite one, a gargantuan incense cedar, is perfectly positioned like the world's biggest sundial, gracing every last square inch of the back yard with its shadow for at least a couple of hours each day. 

As a result, many of our edibles are patchworked around the northern half of the property, tucked into the sunniest spots I can find:


The unused west wing of the estate?  No; just the tomatoes and basil, huddling together for warmth along the south wall of the garage. 


The raised-bed area saw some nice new construction this weekend, courtesy of Bamboo Bob.  Over winter, when the tallest things growing were collards and kale, I arched sections of pig panel over the beds to keep the neighborhood cats out (with mixed success).  Now that we're preparing for climbin' cukes, it's time for a different solution.  My stingy little heart glows with pride; not only did Bob fence in the beds without acquiring ANY new materials, AND use dead bamboo culled from our sideyard, it's also cute!  And it's easy to use!  Each walkway is accessed by a little gate.  The gate attaches to/detaches from the rest of the fence by two bamboo rings that slide over the bamboo "fence posts". 

Most importantly, the matching bamboo trellis really ties the room together:

Maybe it will also be slug-proof?

A cat could jump over this if properly motivated, but I predict that they'll go looking for a more accessible litterbox instead.  The nutria that chomped down several kale plants this winter will definitely be stumped.  The digging squirrels?  We shall see.  They're too fat to fit through the 2"x4" paneling, that's for sure.  If the nocturnal slug snacker (who has paid us a couple more visits) clambers over it, it'll be a strong argument for raccoon or possum.  Stay tuned!

In Good Company

The summer squash that I've been cultivating in my nice warm office are three...or four? weeks old (oh garden journal, will you ever be recovered from the burning wreckage of my hard drive?), and growing in leaps and bounds.  I guess that's what happens when your first food is a big, delicious squash seed!  The cukes are more moderate, but equally attractive in their development:

Foreground: Cavili and Patio Star squashlets.  Hidden in the middle: Boothby's Blonde cukes.  Background: Sunburst patty pans and a couple more Cavilis.

Since they all sprouted and seem to be thriving, I've been frantically canvassing my coworkers to find good homes for about half of them.  My capacity for baby summer squash is doubled by the fact that I enjoy them raw (especially grated as a replacement for cold pasta salads) as well as grilled, steamed, souped, and roasted; however, my sweetheart does not.  So.  If all else fails, I think I'll grow my extras in 5-gal buckets out front by the sidewalk (one of the sunnier parts of the yard anyway) with "Harvest Me" signs on 'em. 

Naturally, now that the rangy Sunbursts have two sets of true leaves and are rooting up out of their peat pots in search of soil, the weather has switched from last week's sun to driving rain and temps below 60 F.  Sigh.  Hang tight, little patty pans!  Hopefully the weekend will dry out your little bed!

A New Nightwatchman?

My morning visit to the raised beds today revealed evidence of a very busy night in the garden.  No plants had disappeared; no leaves had been chewed; the soil was undisturbed save for a moderate hole in the corner of Bed 1.  But Somebody had dug mysterious moats all around the outside of the beds, right up against the boards.  We're talking a good 48 lineal feet of trench, up to 4" deep.  Pretty impressive digging.

I immediately assumed that Somebody had been trying to break into the beds from below.  Voles?  Moles?  Rats?  Having bragged to my older brother just last week about our inexplicably mole-free neighborhood, I feared divine retribution for my boasting.  Reason quickly dismissed this theory, however.  Whoever dug these trenches is obviously a champion earthmover.  S/He would not have needed to try every inch of the perimeter in order to get into the beds.  Besides, the soil surface was totally accessible (and a lot softer than the clay pan upon which our garden rests). 

So what would Somebody be after at the outside edge of our beds, where the nipplewort thrives in defiance of my attempts to suffocate it with wood chips? 

It seems too good to be true, but I suspect that my garden has been blessed with a nocturnal slug snacker. 

Our backyard is a known hideout for raccoons and possums, and although I've never seen them, the neighborhood definitely harbors at least one skunk.  Could we have a backyard skunk??  The imagination thrills!  The imagination also suggests that we start keeping the cat in after dark. 

At any rate, even if this Somebody is also the culprit who filched a whole baby Bibb lettuce the other night (which, come to think of it, was pretty slug-infested..), it is a small price to pay for such an industrious pest-removal specialist.  It will be interesting to see if my slug beer-traps start going unused...