Savoring moments in my morning window space, knitting and enjoying a second beautiful cup of home-roasted coffee while mulling over the notes, the careful calculations, the charts drawn and redrawn a dozen or more times, sipping, sifting, filtering out the dregs of many half-starts, and deleting files. I am closer to the finish with the best work, in my opinion, of my designing ability.  Soldiering on through the pandemic days and the spring and summer months as the empty calendar pages flip, getting nearer to that time when it will simply be finished.  But I am taking my time. I am learning a lot about knitting sweater proportion, enjoying snatching up my calculator and changing up the numbers in a slight panic yet again, a thing which has become a little brain rush, but also am learning to keep the perspectives reasonable and stress minimal.   Its all a thing I love to do.

The volunteer vegetable garden is flourishing and I am stunned each and every day to see it, realizing that when the garden is least imposed upon it does its best magic! Volunteer squashes and tomatoes taking over , and watering with a sprinkler is attracting birds by the flocks!  So many robins, gold finches, and bluebirds have become like pets, more interested in bathing in the baths and foraging than to worry about me walking by too near ~~~  my little darlings!

The insects have dwindled as a result of having all these insect-munching birds around, and what garden pests? I don’t see a single one! Life among the birds and the happy garden, and because they are thriving, so am I thriving.  Not much is ripening yet, except the lettuce and leeks flowering , so of course, that explains the vase of flowering lettuces on table which I hope to save seed from.

My list of kitchen concoctions is growing in number, as I practice making with basic ingredients. The counter is sprawling with sprouting jars of alfalfa and winter wheat in various stages, soaking beans, yogurt setting up, and the oven is getting worked with all the loaves I am baking with hefty mix-ins of sprouted wheat grains. I got a hold of a five pound bag of raw organic peanuts and for the first time in my life am learning how to pan roast, and make peanut butter!  I often have for lunch some home-made hummus on home-made bread with a thick smear of home-made savory greek yogurt, and topped with a pile of home-grown alfalfa sprouts . . . paired with a tall glass of lemonade which is just a bunch of ever-so-thin lemon slices packed into the bottom of the glass, sweetened with a home-made ginger syrup I make from piloncillo and fresh root of ginger, a ton of ice, top off with water,  and voila! A lot of home-made.

I am going for walks more now, although short ones, as the trails are rather hemmed in by ever toppling  charcoal trees but I do get myself going up to witness the changing landscape.  Gone are the days when I could just walk up the ridge road to the peak and get in my three and a half steep miles. Those days will return, I just don’t know when, perhaps the next generation. So I walk a bit less, and work outside a lot more.  Walking barefoot all summer on sub-floors, not caring in the least that the finish floors are not done, just enjoying the house and the steady superb trim work that Jeff is doing, exactly as he had done on our original house. Oh! And that sprawling pile of building mess, lumber & tools which occupied the middle of the house and nearly hid the lower half of this post,  as of last week, is now gone! A massive aesthetic improvement to the house.

Lastly, I am finding that lots of little mini naps to defrag my brain is the best recipe for clear thinking, being endlessly enchanted by the calm space I’ve made in my loft just for naps, I find that it is improving my mental endurance in the day, especially getting up and out of bed at 5 o’clock every morning,  I think I’m about ready for one now.

Signing off with no complaints,  busy in the sheltering-in pandemic days, and life is good.