A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

It's way too hot but my land is beautiful. I FINALLY managed to get some California native wildflowers growing from seed, so my goal of replacing most non-native plants with natives is proceeding nicely. I have beautiful patches and strips of pink and white and blue and purple and yellow flowers, some ruffled, some intricate as a Faberge egg, most no bigger than my thumbnail.

My nectarine sapling, my tomatoes, and my corn is growing very well - I have actual unripe nectarines! Very exciting. Even if something other than me ends up eating them this year, I now know that both grow well in the areas I put them.

I didn't finish my defensible space goals before going to Europe, so I'm continuing now. It's a ton of work even though obviously I'm not doing everything they recommend. I live in a forest, I'm committed to rewilding so I'm not raking leaves in the forest areas, and my deck is going to have deck furniture or what's the point?

But I'm doing everything I can, focusing on removing dead weeds, raking paths and other areas with nothing that's supposed to grow on them anyway to create firebreaks, and creating as much of an ember break as I can within the five-foot zone. Unfortunately the only cherry tree branches I can reach to pick the cherries are right up against and over the deck. Still pondering that one. I'm going to consult an arborist anyway so I'll ask about that.

All the leaves, branches, etc, are getting dumped on an ivy-covered downward slope ending in a fence. This is an area which I want to fill in anyway, to smother the ivy and create an area where I can grow... something. It's in dense shade and not easy to reach with a hose so I'm thinking shade-growing native plants.

I have another huge ivy patch I covered in cardboard over a year ago to smother it. I need to cover the cardboard in mulch, then in dirt. Once that's done, I will only have four giant ivy patches remaining, down from the eight or so I started with.

This is half an acre and I'm the only person working on it till I get the arborist involved, so it's a fairly jaw-dropping amount of work. Luckily it's work I enjoy, though I'd enjoy it more if it was cooler.

I have spent most of my time since the snowpocalypse dealing with the fallout of the snowpocalypse, and have made minimal progress other than getting running water restored to my house. Every single repair and insurance issue involves extremely time-consuming errands which inevitably conclude in being told that I need one more thing involving another extremely time-consuming errand which concludes in being told I need to do another extremely time-consuming errand...

On the plus side, only two of my saplings (the pear and a cherry) were destroyed. One was severely damaged (the plum) but will probably survive. The others were all damaged to more minor degrees and I think will be fine. The bulbs I planted pre-snowpocalypse are starting to come up.

My phone is still broken. I spent ages being sent around trying to prove my warranty, but when I finally did that, I was informed that the warranty does not cover damage to the physical structure of the phone. So now I need to take it to a regular repair shop.

I got three different diagnoses on my non-destroyed car by three different mechanics, which does not inspire confidence. (This is for the engine issue, not the cracked windshield (etc) which is also still not repaired.) I finally took it to the dealership in the hope that the warranty would cover it. After the inevitable ages spent dealing with that, I was told that they warranty did not cover it as there is nothing wrong with the catalytic converter itself. Apparently (God I hope this is correct) the actual problem is that some of the essential hardware around the catalytic converter is missing. Their theory is that someone tried to steal the catalytic converter, but was interrupted!

Needless to say, attempted theft is not covered by the warranty. But at least it's an easier and comparatively cheaper repair than replacing the catalytic converter itself.

But! On the plus side, while all that was going on, I FINALLY finished Defender Chimera!

Started my car to leave. Engine made a very unsettling sound. Car is now in the shop to be checked. If I don't get it back either fixed or okayed to make the drive within two hours max, I will have to cancel the plumber who was going to meet me today to turn my water back on, and when I get to go back home will depend on his schedule.

I have a woodburning stove!





The glass for the windows hasn't been installed yet, so it's not yet usable. However, we lit a tiny fire as a test and it works beautifully, with a small but lovely view of flames.

The stove is from 1978. The handyman was very taken with my cabin on his first visit and apparently spent some time finding a stove that was 1) small enough to fit, 2) matched my general aesthetic. He found this little beauty and fixed her up for me. I can't wait to sit in front of a crackling fire and watch snow falling outside.

He's definitely coming back with the glass. I haven't paid him yet.

This morning Alex dove between my ankles and bolted out the door. He's better at predicting snow than that groundhog. I'm now lugging bundles of summer clothes to the shed and winter clothes to the house.

Also this morning, I saw the coyote sniffing around my chicken coop. At 11:00 AM! Very odd. The raccoon was out in the day, too. They were both acting perfectly ordinary so I don't think it's rabies or any other disease. Maybe just the darker days?

It's the beginning of my second year in the house and will be my second winter. For all of Crestline's flaws (there are exactly two decent restaurants), I love it here. There's something beautiful and new on my land every day, there's wildlife, and there's always some pleasant physical job that needs doing.

Today I planted two blueberry bushes and the last of the native plants from the native plant sale, put down a few more rocks on the paths I'm making, bundled all the chickens but Uncatchable Sally into the chicken tractor so they can munch on weeds, dumped cardboard over some ivy to get rained on tomorrow, and am taking a brief break before I lug the outside furniture cushions into the basement for the winter.

I moved into my house in mid-July, which makes it just over six months that I've been living in my own house.

I chose to front-load as much of the home improvements as possible, with the result that I have not done much in those six months other than house stuff. Realistically I'm not sure the next six months will be that much less house-centric, as I can start planting my garden in May. (Everyone warns direly against planting before Mother's Day.)

I had no idea how much difference owning a house makes on an emotional level, as opposed to renting. I don't think it's about possession in a capitalist sense, but more than you can't be kicked out and you have the right to make it what you want.

I used to think people who were constantly going on about their mortgages and remodeling their kitchens were incredibly boring. Now I get it. (But if you find this boring, I am helpfully tagging these posts so if you're a paid member of Dreamwidth, you can blacklist and never see them.) It's a glorious combination of so many of my new and lifelong obsessions: gardening, chicken keeping, homesteading, emergency preparedness, forests, wildlife, cozy places, crafting, arranging, and dollhouses.

It's even worked the miracle of getting me to genuinely enjoy housecleaning.

50s Housewife or Life-Size Dollhouse?. If you can't see Instagram, it's a photo of a sink, with this text:

"Commemorating the occasion of an almost perfectly clean sink, since it may not happen again for another year. I scrubbed the living daylights out of that sucker. I'm 90% sure it's a lot whiter now than when I moved in.

Either I've turned into an incredibly boring middle aged stereotype or I'm still nine years old at heart, living the dream of a little house in the big woods."

Sadly, I still hate washing dishes.

I have been working on the house largely by doing stuff when I feel like doing it RIGHT NOW. This morning I was particularly bugged by the stained sink and the weird toothbrush holder attached to the wall that I don't use, so I scrubbed the hell out of the sink and pried out the toothbrush holder. (Note to self: buy spackle.)

This is also how I cleared an entire terrace of invasive ivy. Every time I walked by it and felt like yanking out some ivy, I yanked out some ivy. It's possibly not the most efficient method, but hey, it gets the job done with zero resentment.

By the same method, this week I hung a Charles Vess calendar over my bed, put together a standing lamp for the living room, organized my largest closet so I can actually find stuff, sorted my DVDs and discovered a bunch of empty cases which I will now toss, filled my new bookcases that I commissioned to fill a weirdly shaped space in the living room, and hauled a ton of empty cardboard boxes up to the deck so I can rip out the tape and labels at my leisure while listening to permaculture podcasts and then have biodegradable cardboard to cover the de-ivied ground so I can dump dirt on top of it and plant with vegetables or native plants.

I have finally reached the point where any further major projects that require other people are too big to do right now. A whole-house generator, solar panels, better lighting beyond lamps I can install myself, deck refinishing, and a wood-burning stove will have to wait.

My next big project is putting in my garden, which I am doing entirely by myself. But I can't plant till May, so I have three months of nothing but prep. This consists of maintaining my compost heap, amending the soil by mixing in compost with the bad soil, and removing the ivy that covers large portions of the land. Goddamn ivy! It's so hard to yank out, and there's so much of it.

But it's also often pretty cold - too cold to want to work outside. So I am returning to my original house project, which is Marie Kondo style decluttering. Here's my original post about the first time I did that, on my LA apartment: Don't Forget to Propitiate the Sandals

Note that this is not about asking whether your hammer sparks joy. The questions are "Is this something I need or am likely to need in the future?" If no, then you go to "Does this spark joy?"

In my case, I have been buying a LOT of stuff because it is useful or will be useful in the future. I have limited storage space, so I need to go through a lot of random non-useful stuff to see if it sparks joy, because if not, I want it gone so I have more room for firewood, chicken feed, garden implements, etc - all of which genuinely spark joy.

I poured water into a pan for the chooks, then put a hot pad wrapped in a towel beside it for the night. It was still liquid this morning, albeit absolutely filthy. (This is why my regular waterers have nipples.) Oh well, better dirty water than no water.

I had to unfreeze the nipples again this morning with hot water (heating pad didn't defrost them), but the water inside was still liquid.

I think the chooks will survive. They don't drink after dark anyway, so it's really just an early morning issue (before I get up).

I forgot to take out the trash cans last week, so I had an extremely heavy trash can with two weeks worth of trash. It has wheels so normally I take it down the driveway, but the driveway is basically an ice slide, so I had to lug it down a long, steep flight of snow-covered stairs. Congratulate me, it only spilled once.

My new curtains were worth the absolutely crazy hassle of installing them. They look great, they drape beautifully, they feel nice, they block my obnoxious neighbors' obnoxious motion-activated floodlights, and when you pull them, they keep in the heat.

It just started snowing!

Have a video of a squirrel in snow.

I cannot believe how much work unpacking is. I've been doing basically nothing else for days and there's still so much left.

The floor guys just now informed me that they are four boxes of wood short. Contrary to what they said today or ever, my floors cannot be finished today. In fact they're not sure when they can be finished, since the wood people are closed for the weekend. On Monday they'll find out whether they had enough wood to finish my floors, so maybe they can finish them Monday or Tuesday or who knows, really.

Meanwhile, I'm having five large, heavy bookcases delivered tomorrow by people who can put them in place for me...

...only they can't, because large portions of both the living room and the bedroom are bare concrete. The floor guy says he'll come back and move everything into place for me when the floors are done, whenever that is. But meanwhile I'm stuck unable to make any plans for anything because I have no idea when people are going to come in an work on my floors all day.