Standard time blues

Well, winter's back. No, it's not the first snowfall - we've already had that - it's the end of daylight saving time. I make an effort to get out and enjoy whatever daylight there is, but my overwhelming urge at this time of year is to go to bed and stay there until February. I always feel as though an hour of sunlight has been stolen from me, even though I appreciate the extra hour of daylight in the morning. 

I'm being a bit of a whiner here. I live in Southern Canada at the 45th parallel. Most of Canada, quite a bit of the US, and much of Europe is farther north and thus subject to even shorter winter days than we experience here. I don't even think I would like living farther south and missing out on our four distinct seasons and day length variation but I'm much more stoic about the cold and snow of winter than the darkness. 

Only 125 days until March 13...

Nothing like compost turning day to make chickens happy

Today I made a new compost bin with some straw bales and transferred my working pile into it. Every time I work with soil or compost I find I have five helpers underfoot. The other three aren't in this picture because they are at the old pile. They love eating the bugs and juicy bits that are exposed. I didn't add the second layer of bales until I had filled the first, just to save myself some work. The old bin was starting to collapse and I used the decomposing straw to layer with the partially broken down compost. I'll continue to add garden stuff and kitchen scraps until the spring when I'll turn everything in with the winter's chicken litter. The straw bales allow the entire pile to heat up right out to the edges and keep the pile warm for a long time.

The garden is starting to look a bit ratty around the edges, not surprising since we've had lots of frosty nights and lots of rain. Some things, like the kale and carrots are at their sweetest now. I had lots of comments on my instant garden this year. We moved the raised beds, compost and old straw bales from the old house and ordered some new soil. Within a couple of weeks I had tomatoes and pepper plants in and lots of other stuff planted. It was basically time to start planting the fall garden at that point, so I chose things with that in mind. I didn't do any of the season extension things that I was planning to do as we got sidetracked by house stuff, but I did discover that simply planting things midsummer instead of spring allows them to keep going longer into the fall. Easy.

Silent foot fall

One of the pleasures of an autumn walk, just after the leaves have fallen, is the loud rustling sound made by every step. Something makes you almost want to skip along, or at least kick up leaves as you walk through them ankle-deep. After a while, the leaves get rained on and start to mat down and the exuberant noisy leaf walking season ends for another year. And as much as you enjoyed it, it's a relief to walk quietly on the trails again. Another sign that late fall has begun.

My visit to the mall, or two hours I'm never getting back

I've just returned home after two long hours subjected to loud noise, bright lights, poor air quality, insulting surveillance and rude staff. No, not the drunk tank... the mall. Madeleine's Pathfinder group was working on a merit badge (evidently something to do with fashion) and I disqualified myself as a parent volunteer due to my complete lack of knowledge or interest in fashion and my very poor attitude towards the entire endeavour. Thus freed (though feeling like a prisoner) to roam at will within the mall's confines, I wandered aimlessly, looking at what was on offer.

There seemed to be a tremendous number of phone vendors. Back in the day, when a phone was stuck to the wall and came with the house, there were no phone stores. Then someone invented phone jacks and people could choose to put phones in different rooms and there was one phone store in the big malls.  Now that every single human needs to carry a phone and it must never be more than two years old, ever, there are umpty-six different places to buy a phone and a plan in the mall.

I stumbled into a store that specializes in selling products that are advertised on television. They quite helpfully display the commercials on little monitors attached to the shelves. This is in case you haven't been swayed by the obvious merits of whatever gadget you are looking at. The entire store was filled with cheap crap from China and not an item in it filled any human requirement for function or beauty. Especially not beauty.

I was surprised to see a pet store that still sells sad little puppy mill dogs on display in sad little cells. I guess I had assumed that public pressure had forced all the pet stores to stop, but I was wrong. Obviously, people are still buying these puppies of dubious provenance, otherwise the asking price would not be so astonishingly high. Presumably, a puppy doesn't have a particularly long shelf life, but I'm sure it feels long to the poor creatures.

I eventually escaped with Madeleine, who was feeling as woozy as I, and vowed never to set foot in there again. If I ever feel the need for some retail therapy, I will substitute a healthier coping strategy - like drinking.

First fall

One of the unsettling things about moving (something I have way too much experience with) is not knowing how the new house and property will feel during all seasons. We've lived here since the beginning of June, so though we are unpacked we've only lived here for a season and a half out of four. I know when the sun is on the back deck and when it comes in the front window in summer and pre-time change fall. I know what a heavy summer rain does and where the first frost was. I've felt a hot and dry July and I know where to seek refuge from the heat. I don't know where the snow will pile up or where ice will form on the driveway. I don't know what rooms will be cold when it's windy or whether squirrels will take up residence in the garage. I have no idea how much wood and electricity we'll use keeping warm. 

Of course, it takes many years to experience the full range of possibilities and to become fluent in one's place. Generations, even. Or at least, that's how it used to be. On a warming planet, it's not just the recently-relocated who have to deal with uncertainty. Weather patterns are changing and the extremes are getting more extreme. 

Maybe I'll never feel fully rooted. But maybe all the practice I've had living in different places will help me to adapt to an uncertain future.

Sign of the times

Work has been proceeding at the 153 house subdivision next door. Most of the work seems to involve moving a tremendous amount of rock into huge piles and clear cutting the forest. Copious quantities of fossil fuels and dynamite are involved.  Millions of dollars are being spent to run water and sewer lines up the road from town, so evidently the developers, at least, are confident of being able to sell houses.

A few days ago I noticed that surveyors had renewed the stakes marking the lot corners along the property line. It would be overly dramatic to suggest that I felt like they had driven them through my heart - more like a bit of a poke - but it was a stark reminder of what's planned for this land. The most heartbreaking aspect of this is that most of the trees on those lots are likely to be cut down to make room for houses, driveways and lawns. There seems to be an attitude locally that the land is nothing but poor pasture (well, duh, it's a forest) and therefore ideal for clear cutting and putting up oversized, off-gassing, fake stone-encrusted particleboard boxes. And surrounding them with monoculture grass.

Even if the economy holds out long enough for some houses to be sold there, I'm not sure they'll be very practical in a post peak oil world (which is now, by the way). In our area, there aren't many houses being bought or sold just now, which gives me hope that the beautiful ridge will be spared. There's not much I can do to prevent the developers from doing whatever they want, but I will be cheering on the collapse of the economy as perhaps the only realistic way to protect this forest and so many others like it.

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.