A Sinking Feeling

The "sinking feeling" in my title doesn't refer to the fact that our (now former) next door neighbor informed Bob that we have quicksand on our property. I'm referring to the queasy sinking feeling that comes over me whenever I pause and consider the fallout from the situation in Japan. And how can you avoid being obsessed by what's going on there.

(This  is one of those pleasant, diversionary photos I insert when I want to cheer myself up!)

What are people like us to think; we just bought a house and land with the intentions of doing our best to garden and raise some food responsibly. We use compost and organic practices and are horrified by people who use lawn chemistry and could care less what they do to the environment. And then our government persists in the face of nuclear meltdown to say that they're still confident about providing "safe" nuclear energy! I guess they think you can will the facts away...

I realize that we're far down stream (so to speak) in terms of fallout and immediate threat, but what about the whole world as one little global community that relies on each other and one unified environment. Nothing is containable and it's all local.

Not For the Faint of Heart

Be forewarned that this post contains graphic images of blood and gore. We were moving tremendous amounts of boxes and art materials yesterday in a push to finish (please! Oh Goddess!) complete our heroic move. I had even borrowed the van from work and all went splendidly until I somehow dropped a huge box or maybe it was a bookcase... Whatever, the outcome was that I stumbled up against a flagstone topped stonewall and gashed my shin. Boy did that hurt! Fortunately, Bob had a Bandaid ready but I was disheartened to see that I had bled all over one of my (current) favorite pair of socks and the cuff got ripped through my jeans. What a mess.

As if that weren't bad enough, I stood up prematurely in the van and gashed my head. And then, when schlepping yet another painting into the house, I managed to lose my grasp and wallop myself roundly right into the same shin, reopening my damaged leg. Sort of the insult to injury theory... any one have any salt they'd like to rub into my wounds?

Here's a close up; I took this one looking upside down at my own leg: Ouch.

Winter's Smorgasbord

Here's Bob displaying a few minutes harvest from the area around our back door. As alluded to, with the disappearing snow comes a bounty of human discard: bits of wire, selections of wood and sheetrock, cigarette butts, Mountain Dew bottles (does anyone really drink that?!), empty cans of automotive chemicals... a little bit of everything.
As you might have noticed from my last few posts, the weather has ameliorated and we are spending an increasing ammount of time out doors. I'm really excited because the property is beautiful and a big mess.

Creative Landscaping Options

Here's a swell answer to those tough ground cover dilemmas: medium blue carpet, receding snow bank...a knock out combination! I guess come summer, we won't have to waste time weeding or mowing but we may need a longer extension cord for the vacuum cleaner.

Here's another riff on carpets in nature: swaddling the base of a young maple in Berber weave. The beige carpet harmonizes nicely with the logs and leaves already in place on the ground. A bit subtler than the blue number above but lovely none the less! 

Bureaucratic Idiocy Session #2

Here's the second nature shot to peruse while reading my semi-dull tale of paperwork perversion. I'd hoped to present the sweetened condensed verison but I'm notoriously longer winded!
So I promised that I had two tales of Bureaucratic Idiocy to recount. (Believe me, if prodded, I could certainly think of a few hundred more...) The second episode centers on our electric bill. Back in January, I paid a bill that I felt was a bit high but I figured that there was some transfer of account fee or an unpaid balance on our old address. I was so busy doing all the changes involved in moving that I didn't follow up on it. But February's bill comes and it's a killer. I was seeing red and suspecting that we'd moved to some strange Bermuda trinagle where electric bills were twice as high until I re-looked at the bill more carefully. I saw that the problem was with the utility: they were charging us for electric use at both houses. I called the company and the woman who "serviced my account" (sounds sexual) assured me she saw the error and would issue a new bill. I thought that was the end of that.
How naive am I? The new "corrected" bill arrived promptly and was even less correct than the previous one. My payment was not reflected and even weirder was the fact that they dropped our new home's electric account and continued to bill us for the old address. What really took balls was there assertion that our account was now overdue. I spent another twenty miunutes on the phone today and am eagerly awaiting our latest installment of incorrect billing. What has me less than sanguine that this will be resolved soon is that the person to whom I spoke on the phone said she "had to create a whole new account" in order to rectify this msunderstanding... that doesn't bode well!

A Contemplation on Bureaucracy Idiocy Session #1

Here's a lovely and buccolic image to ponder while Your Humble Narrator relates her two most recent brushes with bureaucracies idiotic wheels. The first episode involved several days spent navigating between our former town hall and the Department of Motor Vehicles. Yes, I confess I was late registering my car. I had sworn I had paid my town taxes last fall and just couldm't figure it out. Turns out we had an outstanding tax liability of... 44 cents. I hope we made the Grand List. Anyway, after trips hither and yon procuring special stamps and badges and permissions, the car was duly registered. Even the woman who ultimately helped us at Motor Vehicles agreed that the overdue 44 cents was a bit much. We probably spent over $44 what with the paperwork and driving and time spent cooling our heels in line...

A Sure Signal of Spring

Words from Bob to welcome spring:

I like to smell once

The odor of skunk cabbage

Once a years enough