Holey house, Batman!

The last few months have been pretty stressful around here. We discovered shortly after moving into our new house that the foundation was severely damaged in places and much of the back wall was rotting. We discovered this when removing drywall and insulation in the basement to get rid of a strong rodent odour. Thank goodness for the rats, without which we would have lived on in blissful, if precarious and chilly ignorance. Don't get me wrong, blissful ignorance has its place, but in matters of structural integrity, it's perhaps better to know the painful truth.

The last two months have been a flurry of excavating, knocking down walls, rebuilding walls, insulating, and general construction. Luckily, we've got a great contractor/therapist who has tons of experience fixing broken houses and calming stressed-out homeowners. There's nothing like seeing your house on jacks to activate your blood pressure. We've finally gotten to the point where things look better at the end of the day, rather than worse, which would help with getting a good night's sleep except for the fact that we're also at a point of writing significantly large cheques.

I've had moments where in addition to feeling fear, disappointment, and anger at being thrust into a big renovation project, I've also despaired at the waste and energy consumption this project has caused. I console myself with the thought that preventing an older house (but not that old) from collapsing is pretty green compared with knocking it down (or letting it fall) and building new. We've upgraded the energy efficiency pretty considerably in the process, so I'm hoping our planetary impact will go down over time. Still, the dumpster in the driveway has been filled and emptied several times since we began.

We're starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel: the basement doesn't have a hint of bad smell, we know for sure the foundation is sound, we are confident our well will not be contaminated (that's a whole other story), we are snug in front of the fire and there's a lovely window in the living room where a blank wall used to be. I think I'm going to like it here.

Samhain Resolution

In the Celtic tradition, the new year begins on Samhain (pronounced SOW-en), which falls on October 31. I don't actually have any Celtic connections myself, but I feel a resolution coming on and a pagan new year will do just fine for that.

My resolution is actually a bit of a cheat. A few days ago, I discovered National Novel Writing Month, which is an event where folks sign up to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. The web site is full of all kinds of inspiration and pep talks for overcoming whatever writer's block one has, and just devoting a month to writing. A lot. In a fit of self-delusion I signed up to write my own novel in November but almost immediately realized that there wasn't a chance in hell that I would start let alone finish that kind of project.

But I do want to write and I really want to get blogging more regularly again. So I've decided that instead of writing a novel, which isn't going to happen, I will blog daily for the month of November. I know that for some bloggers that isn't any kind of feat at all, but for me, currently blogging at a rate of barely one post a month, that will be quite an accomplishment.

It's a scary thing to make public any kind of resolution, but this one gives me no place to hide (unlike say a flossing resolution, which only my hygienist knows if I've stuck to) so I'm hoping the added accountability helps to keep me on track.

Happy Samhain!

A Versatile Blogger?!

Thanks to Ottawa Gardener  at The Veggie Patch Re-imagined for nominating me for The Versatile Blogger Award! The rules are that I must tell seven things about myself and pass the award along to several other bloggers that I have just discovered.

So - seven things you may not know about me:

1. I am a first-generation Dutch Canadian, yet I neither look Dutch (haven't been blonde since I was 3) or speak Dutch, and I have never been to Holland. I do enjoy salted licorice, though.
2. I am a very fast reader.
3. I have really flat feet that leave correspondingly strange footprints. I've always been self-conscious about my footprints.
4. I have moved thirteen times in twenty years of marriage.
5. I have worked as a navigation officer on an icebreaker in the Canadian Arctic, an airport firefighter, and an air traffic controller. And none of those jobs is as exciting as it sounds.
6. Someday, I'd like to keep bees.
7. The last time I cried at a movie was the South Central Farm scene in Escape from Suburbia.

And I would like to pass the award along to these great blogs:

1. Frog Blog is chronicling events at Chorus Frog Farm on Salt Spring Island in its first year (and beyond!)
2. I'm Unschooled. Yes, I Can Write has the best tagline: The life and times of an unschooling vegetarian animistic green anarchist hippie child. 
3. One Straw: Be The Change is an absolute treasure trove of practical information on permaculture in a suburban setting. Warning: set aside a lot of time to read through everything. 
4. Living the Frugal Life is a really interesting blog about food, thrift and permaculture with lots of  lists and records and tons of inspiration.

Rules:

1. Thank the person who gave you this award
2. Nominate more people 
3. Tell seven things about yourself

Eastern Smooth Green Snake climbing a Prickly Ash (ouch!)

I'm sure this smooth green snake could tempt me to eat forbidden fruit if he wanted. I've always been a sucker for a Kermit the Frog face. He climbed the prickly ash after we intruded on the sunny trail where he had been warming himself. We don't often see snakes in trees in this part of the world (Eastern Ontario) - perhaps we're just not looking for them. I have seen a garter snake on the side of a large maple trunk before, but this guy was practically defying gravity on the skinny branches. He is considerably bigger than the only other smooth green snake I've ever seen. I'm pretty sure he is at least 60 cm long.

Some of the older neighbours

We live on what used to be the bottom of the Champlain Sea not too far from the shore, I'm told. Around 300 million years ago, in the Ordovician period, there was a lot of marine life including cephalopods, similar to the squid, octopi and cuttlefish swimming around today. There are a couple of nice examples in the exposed limestone on our property.

I have no idea what specific kind of cephalopods these may be. There are all kinds of other little creatures in both of these pictures. My uneducated eye sees only things that look like they should be in the ocean. We're a long way from any salt water here so it's fun to go beachcombing in the backyard. 

I wonder if a few hundred million years from now anyone will be trying to identify me?

Don't tell the others...

...Edna is my favourite.

The herbalist's apprentice makes a tincture

Since the early spring, I've been spending one day a week at a herb farm in the Ottawa Valley as a herbal apprentice. I've been getting hands-on with all kinds of plants, wild and cultivated, at the farm and experimenting at home.

Today, I decanted and filtered a tincture of St. John's Wort. There is lots of St. John's Wort growing on our property, the result of the generous application of horse manure by the previous owner. St. John's Wort is considered a noxious weed because it is harmful to some livestock.

A tincture is made by chopping up St. John's Wort flowers and leaves and stuffing them in a jar. The jar is filled with vodka and left to sit for six weeks. The active ingredients in the herb are soluble in alcohol. It looks pretty murky after spending most of the summer on the windowsill. St. John's Wort is typically harvested on St. John's Day (June 24), but it reblooms after being cut back so several harvests can be made from the same plant over the summer.

 

After six weeks, the tincture is filtered through a jelly bag and squeezed tightly to get every last drop. The tincture is still pretty cloudy at this point.

I used a coffee filter to clarify the tincture. You can see the lovely clear red colour.

The tincture can be taken, a few drops at a time, to help with stress, anxiety and the blues. This will be part of my winter survival kit for when clean living isn't quite enough .