It's an ill wind...

And it was too. We had a grand-daddy of a wind storm a couple of weeks ago. I'm too lazy to deal with getting photos on Blogger, but they're all on Flickr. I have a widget that uploads there easily, thank goodness.

It had, of course, been raining and raining...and just for a change, raining some more. The ground hereabouts is completely saturated. We've got pools of water all over our woods, one seasonal creek is going strong and we could probably dig a channel for another. The north side of the driveway is yet another creek. Septic leach field has had standing water over it--the Better Half dug out the seasonal creek and that seems to have fixed that problem, thank goodness. The well overfloweth too, which means our water is potentially contaminated by the nearby leach field. So. Very wet. Then the wind.

As I was putting the Spawn to bed, we heard a great many thumps and bangs--branches and pine cones falling on the roof, I think. There were also a few power flickers, which had her freaked out. She's not big on the whole darkness thing just now. But the power stayed on and she eventually settled down and went to sleep. This only lasted until...10:30 or so, when the power went down and stayed down. I managed to get her back to sleep, but only until 5:30. That's when she really lost the plot about the darkness. Hooray for keeping flashlights all over the house.

Once it got light, we made plans to head for warmer and lighter areas (gotta have a wood stove in whatever house we buy!). But...flashing lights out at the end of the driveway. There was a large tree down across the road and the power lines. The police said it had stopped sparking an hour ago though and we were allowed to go in search of breakfast. That plus an expedition to the local shopping mall occupied a decent chunk of the morning. Power finally came back on at 10:30 or 11:00 that morning.

Once we got back and turned on/plugged in everything that needed it, we decided to see what else had happened in the night. My, oh my, oh my. Half a dozen sizable trees were down in the pasture, three or four in the woods, and a big maple in the side yard. I wouldn't even try to count the smaller trees (smaller being defined as of a size to be cut down by the Better Half). Oh, and the tree across the road was from our place too.

A lot of the trees that fell were standing in completely saturated ground, which was probably why they fell. There was one deadfall and the maple was diseased. We were lucky, since no structures were damaged and no animals were hurt. I certainly hope that was it for this winter though.

All this prompted the Better Half to get a 40 cubic yard container dropped in the front for the hauling away of brush. Merry Christmas--it was delivered the Thursday before and will be going back full on Monday. I don't even want to think about what all the brush hauling has done to the pasture. And there's enough left for another container, maybe two. There are times when there's something to be said for urban living. We're not moving though. We ARE planning to look for our own property in the winter and will reject out of hand any places as waterlogged as this one.

What I learned today

I learned that octopuses have three hearts. They apparently also have lots of extra neurons in their tentacles. Neat trick, that. I also learned that Jupiter now has sixty-three moons! I am just thankful I didn't have to read *all* the names to the Spawn. I would have, but we'd already done the names of most of the other moons in the solar system. A big thank you to the Spawn for getting me started.

Oh, and I also learned that sheep do indeed fit themselves through relatively small spaces, no matter what the Better Half might think. But they're very susceptible to being lured back into the pasture with sheep crack (otherwise known as a handful of grains).

The Halloween that wasn't.

The Spawn has shown almost no interest in the whole Halloween thing so far. She did like making jack-o-lanterns. Any opportunity to draw on an unusual surface is a sure-fire winner. Pumpkin pie interests her also. But dressing up, not at all. The Better Half is theorizing that she doesn't really see the point. She pretends all the time and doesn't need fancy clothing. Fancy clothing is fun, but usually unrelated to the pretend of the moment. I guess she might figure it sounds like Halloween is a day when the rest of the world joins her in pretending. Whatever the case may be, no costume. We may go to some low-key event so she can see other costumes (which would probably cause her to finally want to dress up) or we may just say the heck with it for this year. Maybe we'll just stay home and make a gluten-free pumpkin pie.

Next year, really!

That's the way I feel about our garden. Each year we've faced...challenges. This year was no exception. The weather plus the timing of our move plus the need for fencing and such made it impossible to get stuff in the ground for a summer garden. So we planted for fall and winter...sort of. Some stuff didn't make it in or not until late. We kind of missed summer entirely, so everything that made it in "on time" was probably about a month late. It gets a bit demoralizing. Next year the Spawn and I are in charge and hopefully that will be a good thing.

On the plus side, we discovered the best green beans ever and found a decent variety of carrots (thanks to the Spawn who liked the name). Assuming all goes well, we have some overwintering stuff--broccoli, kale, cabbage--that will make for good eating in the early spring. We probably have a couple of months worth of carrots and beets in the ground. And we have a plan for getting the ground ready to plant when spring does come. Chicken tractors are a good thing!

Why?

On the way home from the park today, the Spawn started asking questions.

"Why is grass?"
"Why is grass what?"
"Why is grass grass and not something else?"
"That's its nature." Note stock answer used when trying to end a line of questioning so I can concentrate not getting us killed on the road.
"What if grass looked like something else?"
"Maybe it wouldn't be grass any more."
"What if grass looked like something else but it was still really grass?"

Gods. What are the questions going to be in ten or fifteen years?

Thoughts on Bikram yoga

Yesterday I had my first and last Bikram yoga class. I'd had my doubts about the style, since I don't really do well with heat, but I allowed myself to be seduced by a very good deal. For me it turned out to be not such a good deal after all.

Bikram is otherwise known as hot yoga. The classes are held in a room that's heated to 40C (100-105F). If it's not hot, it's not Bikram. The theory is that the heat allows students to stretch more deeply, that it helps prevent injury, and that it helps with stress and tension release. Hum. Right. The very best yoga teacher I ever had said a couple of things that I find I now agree with completely. What the heat is more likely to do is allow a person to overextend themselves. If you force your body to do something before it is really ready, you achieve nothing. Also, in a good yoga practice, your body generates its own internal heat. External heat is unnecessary.

A Bikram yoga session consists of two breathing exercises and twenty-six asanas. It's the same two and twenty-six in the same order every time. No allowance is made for varying things based on your needs at the moment. There are days when I feel like all I want to do is spinal twists. Other days I need some extra energy and a set of sun salutations is just right. If I had to do the exact same asanas day in and day out, I would not be doing yoga.

Other aspects of the class turned me off, but I don't know if they're Bikram specific or just bad luck with that studio. The instructor talked constantly. It was like listening to an auctioneer turned drill sergeant. She talked about meditation, but there was definitely no meditative feel to the class. It was more like a yoga-robics class. She also spoke of how anyone who came in and did a Bikram class six days a week for a month would change their lives for the better. Maybe so. But I would be willing to bet that you could say that of pretty nearly any sort of exercise. Commit and DO it every day for a month and, unless you've chosen competitive shuffleboard or something, you'll see changes for the better. This would be particularly the case if you choose some sort of mind-body exercise--yoga, martial arts, qi gong....

At the end of a good yoga session, your body should feel USED. It should feel as though every single muscle in your body has been stretched and worked. Your joints should feel loose and warm. You should sleep well. After yesterday's session, I had a bad headache, lots of lovely nausea (to the extent that I could neither eat nor drink for quite some while) and I haven't slept so poorly in a very long time.

I guess I'll get back to my search for a good yoga teacher here in the 'Couv. I want someone who teaches Vinyasa yoga, who is calm and centered in themselves and in their teaching, who doesn't over-instruct or put me to sleep. There must be one somewhere in town.

Slight change in plans....

Well, they're finally getting started on the environmental cleanup out in the front "pasture". We've not been able to USE it as pasture, since the whole cleanup issue has been hanging fire all this time. It turns out they're going to dig a honking big hole in the ground, make one pile of clean dirt and one of contaminated. The contaminated stuff gets turned once or twice a week for at least a month until it's clean. Then it all gets put back in the hole and sort of tamped down. Any water they come across gets put into a...I think it was a 5500 gallon tank to be aerated and cleaned. It then gets dumped somewhere on the property (not in the creek).

In other words, lots of space, lots of time, no chance of using that pasture this year. Boo. So. The Soay wether and the two ramlings will become tasty meat in the freezer. The two goats will go back to being tethered, which they won't like. It does allow us to put them where the blackberry particularly needs eating...and they won't be overgrazing the pasture. That basically halves the pasture population. This is a very good thing.

It probably won't be worth fencing the rest of the pasture area (that's being excavated) for next year. Too much time and money needed for that project. Pigs, still probably a go for spring and hopefully chickens and turkeys again with better raccoon proofing. We'll probably go for dumber than snot but fast growers where the poultry is concerned. I'm forgetting the variety of pig the Better Half was interested in. It's a heritage breed and all that good stuff though.