Oooooh neato! I spotted (so to speak) this bright yellow moth from far far away. I was surprised that it didn't fly away when I walked right up to it and turned over the leaf it was resting on, to get a better look at it's pretty Jackson Pollock splatter spots. (Walking softly helps, but not casting a shadow over it is key to sneaking up on just about any insect. )
I think I may possibly love growing herbs more then vegetables. This isn't to say I don't love growing veggies but just something about an herb's ability to give to every meal, that steady and unfleeting life gives it a more personal appeal (long term relationship style). I have been planting herb seeds in starter pots and then slowly moving them into my organic garden spaces... so here's introducin' a few of my babies!
And here is my babie, little Garlic Chive...
My very favorite babie herb is Sage because the seed isn't planted in the ground but is just placed on the surface of the soil, then becomes the strongest woody herb bush with fantastical purple flowers. Mmmm.
XoXOooo
I can walk the same path everyday and it's never the same. The magical thing about living out in the boonies where no sidewalks, parking lots or neighborhoods exist, is that you have the privilege of seeing what nature does when unattended to. And it's pretty awesome. Everyday new flowers bloom, leaves get bigger, wild mushrooms pop out the ground, fresh animal tracks stick in the mud...the creeks rise and fall with the rains that come down and the clouds re-frame the mountainy backdrop in an ever changing dramatic shroud.
Trees will bend, twist and grow depending on how the shadows and sunlight fall - creating canopies and entrances to their own secret kingdom. While the flora below creates the illusion of a soft carpeted ground, one that grows upward by the inches everyday.
Livestock, as well as wild animals will carve out perfect paths to walk along that double as geometrical modern art. Every bit of growth frames the next thing behind it.
I love seeing baby spiders all lumped together in these moving sculptures - there's nothing else to say.
The property I live on in Big Sandy Mush has a neat little trail along a very steep hill - I have decided to walk around the loop everyday to build up endurance enough to start hiking again. These are pics from along my walk... The picture up top is a view from over the top of the ridge.
This cow was looking at me look at it for a while - I tried so hard to get a clear picture of it's ear tag that hilariously read "Mo-Bel" which I wasn't sure if that was short for 'more cow bell' or 'Moo Belle' ? Usually cows are just numbered and not named...that's what I like about living here.
The woodpecker that crafted the holes in the log above must be freakin' huge. A screech owl could live in that top one it's so big!
Above is a pic of me standing next to the biggest trillium plant I have seen yet, looks like I am living in the jungle. I felt proud standing next to it the way some red blooded Americans feel when standing next to the Washington Monument... but then what happened next
Woops Leslie! I was hanging there upside down by one leg, calling for help. he he... if it couldn't get any more bananas, when I tried getting up I kept sliding down hill in the wet mud over and over... and you can see the person behind the camera was taking pictures and laughing at me more then helping me. ;)
Eventually I got my swing on though, with a little help mounting the thing. It's hard to tell, but the flora is really tall and the vine was super high off the ground plus there is nothing but steep declining hillside to swing over. Which I suppose is why I look like a stiff happy bucktooth hippy (just like my 7th grade Gym teacher)... apparently sticking out my teeth will protect me when I fall. :)
At the end of the trail there was this neat centipede. Looks like it comes from the land of dinosaurs! 
After gathering a good amount of sap off a pine tree, you'll need some extremly dried grass. We used bamboo leaves since it's been raining like a motha' here for over a month now. We wrapped the leaves in foil and heated them in the toaster oven to dry them out. You can also dry grass or leaves over an open fire or candle too. The point is to get it dry enough that you can powder it, even in the picture below it could be powdered alot more- but the humidity in the air made this as tiny as it would get.
First you put the pine sap alone (without the powdered grass!) in a container to heat it up. We used an old bean can and held it over a candle for controlled cooking.
Bort made a cool make shift handle with a screw driver to easily hold the pine sap can over the candle. You can see the pine sap beginning to smoke and heat up! Supa' neato!
Once it gets cooking it's good to stir it with a stick (or whatever you like to stir with) before dropping in the dried grass.
It bubbles like a pine smellin' witches brew...
Once it got really bubbling, the dried bamboo leaves & 1 tablespoon of powdered charcoal were added in and stirred, then it turns into this awesome black as night gluey substance.
This is a kind of glue that can be stored in the dry form and then re-heated to make it into glue again. In order to store it you can scrape it out the cooking container with a dull knife or the stirring utensil you were using....
Then it will actually roll onto a stick, which you can twirl around on a smooth surface like the rock picture below. Once it's cooled off enough you can shape it with your fingers too! It dries rock hard and if powdered grass is not added it will be very brittle- the dried grass is the binder holding the glue together in place.
I never knew glue could be so pretty, but that stuff looks mystical. Xoxo
Let's just say something terrible was to happen, like Peak Oil or Armageddon or you went camping & forgot your hair brush...and you don't want to develop dreadlockin' knots on your well groomed head. When out in nature and in need of a full service hair brush you can just pick up a dried pine cone and comb away on those lovely locks. The more open and bigger the wedges the better- the smaller more compact pine cones like I am holding have to be held on an angle.
I was surprised how well this actually works, seems like something fairies use to brush unicorn hair or maybe how the easter bunny keeps looking so clean cut. 
How in the hell I convinced everyone not to kill this creature I have no idea... but here is a true poisonous snake. I saw his tongue slither in and out but there was no striking or hissing which I am assuming he was exceptionally chill because he was about to shed his skin (which I also assume because I read in a book that their eyes cloud over as the skin shedding approaches.) And let me tell ya', it looked like his eye sockets were made of ghostly white haze that could shoot a hole through your heart. A Medusa that could have turned me to stone.
I am actually really fond of snakes and have complete respect for the venomous ones too, I don't F with them so that they won't bite me. The two pictures below are of his quick and creepy departure into thicker grass... are you grossed out?
xoxo
* Watching the wildlife through my bedroom window...when they aren't in my house. :)
* Digging through cut invasive vines to find good ones for basket weaving & wreathe making. They have to be pulled out the trees & then the dried ones were gathered to soak in the pond.
* That's when Bort got the idea to swing on a clump of vines over the declining hillside, like freakin' Tarzan...
I took up the Jane torch and swung a few times, each round screaming in a terror that apparently makes my tongue hang out like a happy dog. It hurts your hands, makes you swear, and you want to do it all over again.
* Rock hunting! One of the neatest things to do in the smokey mountains. Many of the rocks we found were quartz, mica, and something that looked like garnets.
XoXo
I have waited half my life to see a Lunar Moth that was alive and real. I have pleaded my story outloud to gawd knows how many people during those years, always asking if they ever saw one... gasping if they did and asking what it was like. Lunar Moths are huge, jarring, beautiful, and the kind of flying creature you never forget once you've seen one. It's like you are suddenly special for the mystical thing having let you lay eyes on it.
Not only are there the "fake owl eyes" on the wings but the real eyes of the lunar moth are large and round- like it knows the secret to all creation and sees right through your soul. I love the beauty of the light shining through it's wings in the picture below, it goes from a cartoony opaque to a translucent glow.
It was quite docile and got right onto my hand, which made me think it may be dieing. I made sure to not touch it, even when it began to vibrate vigorously on my skin kinda of scaring me to what it would do next. It simply took flight slowly and precisely back to it's place at the window, where it still sits motionless.
Yay! One dream come true down, just a few more to go!
In the words of the 80's rock band Poison... "Oh my god look what the cat dragged in"! But this little chipmunk outsmarted the two cats running in fanciful circles around the house, with Chippy a few steps ahead- under & over the bed, scaling walls, knocking down knick knacks, taking refuge behind the litter box. For hours. And hours. I don't even want to point it out, but the fur on the end of his tale went missing during this time, which you can see in the pic above...Grossssss! It wasn't until Chippy ended up in the bathroom sink somehow that he was caught and released back into the wild... the other wild not inside my house.
Before going free, most likely to then become snake food - he posed for these professional head shots. Possibly he could achieve some Alvin & the Chipmunks celebrity status as he's always dreamed of. ;)
Here's the deal... the owner of the fashion company Forever 21 was on trial for selling knock offs of another deisgner's creations. Not that she cared much since she's had 50 other lawsuits slapped at her, denied even knowing how much her company grosses in a year (over $1.5 billion), and was a perfect master at the art of playing dumb. But as someone who loves, wears and sells ethically made clothing her ignorance to how & where the clothing was made is absolutely fascinating... I think her words on the witness stand (quoted below) spell out exactly everything about the fashion industry's attitude towards the world a large ---> aka- the little poor people don't count for shit, as long as they slave away sewing cheap imitations & the almost poor people buy it up like desperate hungry dogs. Personally the fact that she is on trial for knocking off some other garment is kind of the last rung on the ladder of a larger problem of how these types of businesses are run without any ethical standards- being the greater crime to humanity, but oh, the pity for the other whiny but vandalized designer who also makes unethical garments for us! It's like having two bratty children arguing in the school yard, when both are just as much an asshole as the other. 
This is an apple tree and a berry bush bearing fruit in it's baby stages. Everything little is cute, even food! It's magical how the flower becomes a fruit and then we eat it and the seed makes a new plant and the whole thing starts over again... but really my favorite part of the whole thing is that the insects do all this work, like secret soldiers. We (humans) can be doing whatever - standing on our head, drinking elderberry wine, driving a car... all the while bugs are making food for us without hardly a notice or nod. Without bugs there'd be no apple sauce and blackberry popsicles, which is what I want to make this year... so hail to all non blood sucking creepers. :)
xoxo
I like to stand on this hill along the fence line marveling at the Big Sandy Mush valley. From this spot I can see where two mountains are diving down towards one another forming a space in between called Robinson Cove Rd. ... I used to live there 3 years ago in the most rustic log cabin your imagination can conjure up. Not even a toilet was there, but there was a antique claw foot tub with the most dated & extravagant looking tub handles, facing a window with a view similar to the one in this picture. Breath taking and too real to be real. Now I live in a rustic converted barn that has a toilet but no working tub, which I only notice when I realize I smell funny & worry that I am like the stinky person on the NYC subway that no one wants to sit next to... but really I just smell like fairy dust, angels, and rainbows. ;)
So I started out with basic circles, wrapping the privet (very invasive) vine around itself to create a bottom piece & a handle. Then tied the two together with Honey Suckle vine.
I attempted to make some 'spokes' by wrapping thin vines around the bottom circle, keeping the image of a spider web in my mind's eye as a guide.
I used the 'spokes' then to wrap under and over them continuously in a circle...which took FOREVA' and eva' and Evaaaaaaaa.....
I tied the third loop where I wanted the height of the basket to be. Really I wanted it to have alot of depth and be bigger, but my hands were getting cut and my mind was starting to lose itself in all the winding. I kept thinking if I knew what I was doing, it would feel so much smoother... metaphorically and literally. Possibly soaking the vines in water first makes it all alot softer.
I found the wrapping part for the sides of the basket to be a little confusing, but was beginning to get a pattern going by simply wrapping in and out, around the top and bottom breaded wreathes.
I only used two types of invasive vines to makes this basket and I think after hours of working on it, that I can't help but put up this dorky pic below of me with my beloved basket, it's the kinda shit a grandmaw can love! 
That incubator box is a crackin' factory now! Three baby chicks, with a few more cracking out their shells right this minute... and, oh my gawd there is a little black chicken that I want to steal away and hug on forever. These guys are just coming out whenever they feel like it, and not at all on schedule (the expected 21 days). Makes it all the more magical and exciting. :)
Ah! Cute!
xoxo
Bad...ass...! Ya'll shoulda seen this thing running across the freshly ho'ed dirt in my garden, holding that perfect sphere full of spider babies. Wolf spiders are no joke, they look like what I imagine a baby taranchula would look like... meaning they are huge and startling. Fantastic how so many things in nature are so much like each other, like the sack looks a little like the stuff wasps make their nests out of, and the sack itself is in a circle like most eggs (chicken, human, etc...). (Sigh of love.)
xoxo
My homesteading neighbors, Nikki & Cody, have been incubating chicken eggs for the last few weeks which has been really exciting to wait for. The first birth and death have finally come along... both of which are fascinating. Two chicks began hatching, one made it out but in the pic below this chick couldn't get all the way out the egg before it seemed to have drowned in it's embryotic fluid. Terrible but true.
With the macabre news out of the way right off, now we can focus on the cute-tastic explosion pictured below that cracked out it's egg and is a fuzzy peeping ball of perfection. The red hue is from the heat lamp it's lounging under while it gets adjusted to being alive. These chickens are being bred mostly for their yummy organic & free roaming eggs. It's nice to see that baby born and not just in a frying pan for a change. :)
I had to hold it and love on it, and since the weather actually got really cold here in the smokey mountains in the picture below I was breathing hot air into my hands so it would stay warm... possibly more for my own entertainment then anything. But oh, look how small it is, so soft it's like it has fur instead of feathers! Baby animals are magnetizing.
xoxo
The space in the picture above was just a hill covered in brush. I found an old path under the dirt which I dug up and lined with rocks, some of the dirt got hoed some tilled, and the terraces on the hill are made with the plentiful (taking over & invasive) bamboo growing next to the house. I found a few treasures in the ground like the cool light post in the left corner of the pic and tons of old dried up snail shells (they get ghostly white and brittle).
Awwwwww. Poor yittle bunneh got caught by a cat... until I scooped him up into my hands and fell in love. Normally when a cat has another animal in it's clutches I don't interfere in fear of leaving the injured party to a long slow bleeding death & therefore being a waste completely. All things change when a tiny baby bunny's soft fur touches my hands, with black pearly eyes that S.O.S for mercy and freedom.
The injuries appeared to be superficial to me, in that I saw no puncture wounds but rather some exposed skin and ripped off fur in a few places. I wiped them with a wet rag and put aloe vera on the tender skin - for lack of any better meds to sooth the terrified ball of cuteness. Apparently in the world of animal rehabilitation rabbits are not a very big deal, being called the "popcorn of the forest" and usually the effort isn't made to save them. Whatevs. I am saving it.
So it's survivor warrior name I've given it is Desmond. Not very fierce but that's what came to me, and after Desmond got a name it also pooped, pee'd and perked up quite a bit. YAY! Hopefully the skin will repair quickly enough to put the fuzz muffin back out into the woods to live out a more natural life & death cycle then a house cat's blood lust.
xoxo
This is Mr. Coo Coo Clock Cardinal. He's been at my window for about 5 days now... the first few hours were beautiful and I thought for sure he was just eating bugs out there joyously while singing. Then 24 hours passed and he was still at it, increasing his bravery, singing, and pecking hard at the glass. By day three I was about to lose my f-en mind because before the rooster could even crow Mr. Cardinal was banging at my window like an Alfred Hitchcock movie at it's frightening climax. I wondered if he was going to actually break the glass and when I shoo'ed him away he went and begin rounds of every window on the house - pecking in perfect strategic patterns (swoop down past right pane, bang the hell out of left pane, swoop to bamboo, sing, move on the next set of windows...). The cats inside the house were jumping in the air, but that didn't stop Coo Coo Clock - he just went on obsessing over that mysterious bird reflecting back to him in the window- from sunrise to sun down, rain or shine. Sometimes I don't know if he makes me sad or if I want to hold a cat out the window in his predictable path to catch him and put a deadly end to the insanity. He's made me laugh, he's made me cry, Coo Coo has made me even beg for mercy.Gawd help me to not wanna kill him. What do you do with a bird gone Edgar Allen Poe's the raven on ya ?
xoxo
On top those rocks we piled dried sticks, weeds, and bamboo to get a fire started, then threw split wood on top to get a raging hot inferno going. On top of the smouldering fire we threw in more rocks to help hold the heat.
While the fire was kept burning by adding logs and dried stuff, we went out to gather the fresh greenery that is required to layer inside the hole with the goat we were cooking. The green stuff has a dual purpose of creating steam to cook inside the hole and also as a protective cover from the dirt that will be piled on later. We used bamboo leaves, bamboo shoots, and burdock leaves as the steaming layers because they are abundant and renewable.
After about 5 hours we let the fire die down to red hot charcoal and white hot rocks. This is when you are ready to add in the green layers and whatever food you are going to bake.
Wrapping your food in foil is obviously not very primitive... and isn't required at all - you can simply wrap it in giant burdock, banana or some other large (safe) plant leaf that will keep the dirt from falling onto it. But as ya can see below, there is the little goat we slaughtered all wrapped in tin foil under the protection of an umbrella since rain came down a bit on the project. Terrible, ya'll!
The bamboo shoots went down first, then a good layer of bamboo leaves and branches, before laying the goat into the center of the heat. After the foiled goat was in we put the layer of burdock.
More rocks were added to help hold in the hot steam and heat once underneath the dirt.
And more and more bamboo leaves, which were creating all that white hot steam that was rising out in big puffy rolls.
Dirt was put back on top all this in thick layers until we stopped seeing the steam rise out of little holes yet to be covered. It looked like a volcano about to erupt.
UNEARTHING... 
After tons of layers were dug back, taking not even 10 minutes Cody (pictured below) pulled up the goat he slaughtered out of the ground and proudly brought it to the table for everyone to taste, be woo'ed by and also be petrified of! Half the party stood away from the goat and half waited anxiously to try it.
The use of the earth as an oven was perfectly successful - all the herbs and potatoes stuffed inside the goat reminded me of Louisiana crawfish boils, where the potatoes & corn come out looking creamy soft. The goat itself was completely cooked, and could have even been left in only 3 hours instead and been done already. (Pictured below is Brandon at left who helped with the slaughter tempting Jason Bugg to eat some...)
And Bort...(looking like a moonshiner mountain man who knows whats up but don't care)...
Morels (not to be confused with religious morals) are edible mushrooms that are really popular to hunt in the woods and old orchards, but can be difficult to find because they are so camouflaged into their natural setting. They blend right in with the dead leaves and decay on the forest floor - but once you actually spot one you begin to spot them all around the area. They have a look alike morel mushroom that is slightly poisonous, but you can identify it by the fact that it's head pops off too easy as if it's not attached at all. Real morels are in tact, all in one piece... just like the puritans hope our morals are too. :)
You can see in this picture above how well the morels fit into their environment - if their noodle looking stem gets long enough though it makes it much easier to spot the seemingly invisible mushroom. Below you can see how large some get, although in the patch we found they ranged in size a great deal. 
Bort cooked them up in a frying pan to eat - but I declined to eat any on the crack pot premise that a Chinese Med doctor once told me to only eat mushrooms growing on trees for my particular disposition. Once they hit the frying pan they looked like they melted and it was not appetizing anyhow - but let me tell ya, if i was starving I would gobble up any man's morals.... I mean morels.
