All in a Muddle

When I was a kid we lived near the beach. My Grandmere and Grandpere lived a block from the beach. So we swam and swam, played in the sand, and then we ran back to their house and were STOPPED in the yard so we could get hosed off before a proper shower.

There was giggling, wiggling, showering, and then usually something cold to drink. Fresca was popular at the time.

Today my little family lives nowhere near the beach, but the kids make do as kids always have. Summer water fun is far away, but near to home we have the winter wonderland of the pasture outside our door.

And the first storm of the year brings the mud. Do we have mud! Oceans of mud. Piles and piles of mud in puddles; and since we have kids we have kids in puddles.

Now of course you can't just splash a bit, you have to splash a long while. This is not nearly as much fun to do alone as with your sister or brother. Certainly mud applications involve far more than just the boots and clothing. Hair is a fine target, and as indigenous populations around the world will attest, skin applications are of primary importance. Urgent in fact. Opportunity to bond with one's fellow mud lingerers should not be passed by.

When we lived in more temperate climes, we used to have the kids construct mud puddles with a shovel and a hose. The front yard was fine with us, just build a bridge so mom and dad don't fall in. The neighbors were aghast. Perfect lawns and all.

Perhaps the reason I really found Robin to be my soul mate was her reaction to the mud puddle Aliana had made. She didn't shriek or scream about the hole in the yard...she just asked Aliana which plastic animals were best suited to the swamp. I believe hippos were chosen. Well done.

Now we have two little ones again, and while we can't really excavate around here, neither do we have to. Mud abounds. Winter has taken over for summer, the mountains for the beach and the more things are different the more they seem to be the same...

And then there is the hose, the squealing, the dancing around ...and something nice to drink. We'll skip the Fresca though. Being a cold wet day I think we'll go with some hot spiced milk. Cinnamon sounds just about right.

Harvest and Hunker Down

Home school, stay at home, home bound, home round, home hound, home rule, home on the range.

We're in the last little bubble of warm weather here in Calaveras County, trying to get our minds around the notion of long-johns and wood burning stoves. While all this is looming, the day is quite warm and sunny and everyone is still in shorts and sandals.

We did however, have our first good frost, and the local wisdom is that good hard cold is coming soon. We've got out the long coats, I'm having to put away my summer suits (wedding season is later here but is also winding to a close...hooray for holiday family portraits!) and get out the mud boots.

Robin's got the kids' loft in great shape, and our room and the rest of the house are finally in a state where she's happy and comfortable. This is pretty important as our place is small and during winter it's where we spend our time.

This time of year is a bit odd, as there's still quite a bit of food left in the garden, but we know it'll all die soon if we don't bring it in. Our tomatoes were fantastic this year, and my Bulgarian Carrots (very hot orange peppers) were magnificent. So we had salsa of course. Corn was not so great and the kids had fantastic luck with the squash and pumpkins. We grew a few odd varieties and a couple that were just fun because they get so huge.

I had a great conflict about the bees this year. I had hoped to harvest some honey, and this year was going to be the first when we'd have enough. But I decided that I'd let the bees keep their honey another year. We've only got the one hive and I really really want the colony to get well established here.

I'm not sure harvesting would hurt. I'm actually pretty sure it's totally benign. But something just felt right about letting the girls have their feast. Our orchard is coming along nicely, despite the deer visits from time to time. Between our bee colony and our irrigation system it's thriving, so giving back the honey just seems proper.

Next year, there'll be jars and jars.

Tuolumne County Journey

Calaveras County is adjacent to both Amador and Tuolumne Counties. Having lived here about a year now, it's finally come time to explore a little more. I still have not even begun to touch all the parts of Calaveras, and have much exploring to do right here, but I could not resist the urge to go across the bridge, wander, and shoot. I poked around a while in Sonora, then got an invitation to get away for a day. Way way far, up and away.

Long Barn is high in the hills above Sonora...mostly surrounded by National Forest Service land. Very rustic and lovely...if you like trees. I had the honor of being introduced to a sweet family who've got a place up there. It reminds me a lot of our little homestead. It's primitive as regards amenities, but worth all that for the beauty of it all. It really did feel like home right away.

The matriarch of the family is Sandy, and she's got a soft spot for abandoned and neglected horses. She's become something of a little rescue project all by herself. These animals are very happy to have found a nice home. About once a week they're REALLY happy. That's when they get to go out and run loose until they tire out.

Adjacent to Sandy's place is a huge meadow. Approx 50-60 acres. Wild flowers, a little creek, lots of grass and lots of room to run loose. I know next to nothing about horses, but I'm learning a little. What I learned this day is that they're a lot like dogs. They are social, have complicated relationships within their herd, complex personalities as individuals, and they like to play.

I do too. It was a really really nice was to spend a morning. Thanks Sandy.

Cat Scratch Fever

Some time back I posted a picture here of the cutest kitten in Calaveras County. Her name's Phoebe and she's still really cute. We got her at the feed store in San Andreas. She was free.

Today I paid the real price. I wanted a nice picture of the reclining kitty. She was not pleased about being woken up. Nobody really is, particularly from a nap...particularly a cat.

After a shot or two she expressed her dislike of this process by attacking my arm. I look like a suicide.

You can see in the second picture here she's about to go off. She did. I have the marks to prove it.

Kitty love in the afternoon. YOWRRRRRRRRRRLLLL!

The day itself was a very very long one, and the kitty ambush was only the first of many things I found rather thrust upon me as I returned home. I needed a nap of my own.

I had one. It was good. I felt better.

The rest of my day was magnificent. I don't know if I would have attacked were I awoken, but I surely would have growled. I think I did before I went to sleep.

Sleep now, purr later. Eat. Prowl.

Repeat.

The stuff of life.

Izzy Pop

Izzy decide he'd like to compose and sing a song for and about each of us in the family.

He told us he needed a title and a first line, a guitar, a bit of space, and then he'd do the rest.

And so he did.

Izzy composed a bit of a concept performance:

Mom's song was "Potatoes of the Earth". Ellie's song was "Flowers of the Earth". Izzy's song was "Ball on the Park" and Aliana's song was "Page on the Farm"...

He finished with his song for his dad:

"Coffee of the Earth"

-Hot Coffee

Coffee with Milk

Coffee in a Cup

Coffee of New York

Coffee of San Francisco

Coffee of Virginia

Coffee of Santa Cruz

Coffee of Watsonville

Coffee of Angels Camp

Coffee of Starbucks

That is the Best

Dad makes it

Coffee of the Earth.-

Izzy sang, Ellie danced.

I really wish I had dig vid so you could all hear the burn. Or smell the coffee.

As it was I did have a camera (duh) so you get stills...

Live performances are nightly here at home, and most days at Starbucks Angels Camp.

Patrick Works

Stage Father

Different as Night and Night

I had a rough night a while back, losing a load of building supplies along the way home three times before I could get it all delivered safely. On my last reloading stop I rested a bit after lifting really heavy materials back into the truck...looked up and saw the trees and the sky.

Wow. Click.

Having been so long a city mouse, now that I've become the country cousin, at times it's really apparent what exactly has changed. Life is quieter, food is home-grown, I see the kids more, and all that I've written about before.

What's not so clear so often is how this all changes my pictures. Though I'm aware that there is more rural character to the people here, people are still people. Faces are faces.

Then I got into my Lightroom image library and typed in the word "night" and found such a contrast starkly laid before me.

Night photography is a lot of fun. It's got an easy drama to it, and so becomes a first step of love for photography for many young people. That was as true for me as for anybody.

I am still a night owl and love navigating by moonlight. I guess I always will.

Harvest Volunteer

Today our little Calaveras Farm leaped a new hurdle, as we began harvesting our own oats.

No we don't like hot cereal that much, but we're rather hoping the cows will like our oats. A few pounds of seeds planted and tended a bit for a few months and we've now got about a ten-fold increase. Nature is generous.

Of course we've got to do our part, so I volunteered to help harvest. This is a small field, we're a small family, so we did it as it's been done for thousands of years...by hand.

I got out my nice broad-brimmed straw hat, some boots to protect against snakes, and started grabbing up fists full of oats. It was fun. Poking along and talking to Robin as we gathered the grain was the kind of gentle pastoral scene that I'd always hoped for when we first started talking about this place and what we had in mind.

Throughout the field of oats, we kept finding a different grain that seems to have snuck in with the oats. It is beautiful, it's probably good food, but it is out of place.

And then I thought about myself in the field...in my nice hat, not really knowing what I'm doing there, but happy to be there. So I feel a bit of kinship with the odd grain.

So I gathered up some of this grain volunteer for this harvest volunteer, and added it to what has become my farm hat. I'm still a bit out of place, but I fit in more and more all the time, and at least my hat is more beautiful every day.