Sometimes I want to change my life. It's possibly a habit I have developed over the years... made worse by changing seasons (which I did not experience growing up in the tropical south.) But on this rainy PMS day, i have no clue what the change is i desire. Or no real way to plan it out. When it is something simple like, 'i want to move' then i can look for a new house. When it is vague and lingering, almost nagging - it has no rules, it has no plans, it's only a strong desire that hasn't found a form. * I want things, that I dont know if i can have. And if I can have them, I dont know how i will get from point A to point B... although usually the dominoes keep falling on their own knocking the next day into the next without any effort on my part.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx I am on the hunt for a good chunk of sunshine, but always something comes up where i only get the tail end of the bright ball in the sky. I try though. There are always things to discover if I leave the cabin, and that makes it well worth it. This is quite mundane... but so can be reality for us all...
On October 5th I turned 33. Not a big deal really except that it marked a ten year anniversary of something that would change my life forever. This of course led me to think in slightly different terms then usual - basically that silly deep contemplative junk that comes up while I am doing something like shoveling donkey poop, i think: WOW Whoooo woulda thought I'd be doing what I am doing right now back when I was 23...! This is why instead of doing a ten year soul review (cause it's not like I'm having a near death experience just a birthday), i thought I'd do a day in the life! This is actually a day and 1/2.... * Pictured at the top is what happens every morning. I sleep with my cat toots every night and in the morning I wake up with her either snuggled under the covers by my belly, or on top the covers by my belly. Always keeping me warm. I tell her that she is a "fish in the ocean of love" while petting her head, she lays back and looks like she's swimming through an invisible ocean and smashes her face against my hands. Now that it's cold, before doing ANYTHING I get my fire started... I get dressed, eat a lara bar and prepare to greet outside and feed all my animals!
JuJu the donkey and all the chickens get fed a little corn (the chickens also get food scraps), and JuJu gets her 'flakes' of hay (mixed grass hay, never gluten grain hay)...
While all my babies are eating and happy, I take the time to shovel all the donkey shit. Unlike many other areas of my life, I am quite maticulous about keeping the animals fenced area clean. She usually poops in the same place over and over as if she's potty trained but my daily shoveling sometimes throws her off (i think JuJu thinks i am saying it wasn't a good spot to poop in.)
Each day I take the bucket of donkey poop and dump it in the organic gardens I am building. If I have really good energy I keep going with mushy rained on & trampled top soil from the fenced in area too. I usually max out at ten buckets in a day, cause dat' shit is heavy!
On this particular day, while building up the garden JuJu the donkey also went into HEAT again! When donkeys go into heat they make this attractive face (pictured below), while making smacking, chewing and breathing sounds. Some drool can happen from time to time. Chewed food falling out. Tail up. Alot of pee'ing.
After I've taken care of everyone I sit down at the computer to check on emails, stalk ya'll on facebook, check on my store, and watch music videos. ;) I spend time at the computer throughout the day, especially while resting and cooking (i cook all three meals a day).
A RARE thing that happened on this day was I cleaned my house...
only cause after the cob project it was a dangerous (broken plate pieces) and scary (donkey poop cob dirt smeared all over) place.
The tempature also dropped so drastically at the high elevations inthe mountains here, I had to carry all my plants in one by one... gawd I love my plants. So much. Most of them are herbs i use for cooking everyday. I set them up on little round logs so they could reach the light of the window.
Since basil is seasonal and had already died, i took the old peaches I had collected from a neighbor's tree to plant in that pot in hope's that next year at least one of those seeds will sprout a new tree. :)
A daily thing now too is splitting all the logs I have here. This is the stack I did in one day...
Lately, my gravity fed water has been getting clogged with silt. Since the spring water has now been boxed in I can't see exactly why this is happening but there's a good chance some North Carolina crawfish are playing around in there...
I have to blow the pipe.
A neat trick I learned, instead of shoving a long wire up there to unclog it, if i put my hand over the pipe and blow air up into the pipe hard enough the clog come out and tons of water rushed out. Sometimes so fast it hits my face before I can pull back.
I try to walk in the woods everyday. Which isn't hard to do cause I am surrounded. I think it is when I feel most relaxed, most energetic, most healthy and happy.
For my birthday me and Bort took a small trip to Waynesville, NC to go to my favorite thrift store ever! We thrift scored big time, I even found a winter coat that's washable and almost matches my donkey. :)
Next door to the Second Blessings thrift store this little town actually feeds their homeless and poverty stricken everyday. It's pretty awesome. I always wanted to help there but my stupid auto-immune disease won't let me touch the food.
Me and Bort also stopped at the lake there, called Lake Junaluska. All the times I lived near that lake and I had never sat by it. It had quacking & laughing ducks and sparkles reflecting off the surface.
As pretty as it was, I could not wait to get back home to my own lil' pond, and the quiet of my cabin.
I read. Alot. Usually before I go to bed, or by the fire, when evening comes, or when I am sick of the internet during the day. I get used books online, from friends, or borrow from my local Spring Creek Volunteer Library.
Was my average day as exciting as you thought? Is it as exciting as I thought it would be when I was 23? *I imagine 23 year old Leslie sitting outside the All Natural store on Magazine St. in New Orleans. Her eyelids shimmer with pink glitter, her lipstick is red, and her head is shaved on the sides. She's eating the daily special which happens to be a vegan Jambalaya (her favorite), she has no idea what is going to happen in a week or two. She is a successful artist, she's young, educated, what could go wrong. Her Italian artist boyfriend gets up to go use the bathroom... and 33 year old Leslie comes to the table and sits in his place.
She says "In ten years you will be a recluse living in the woods in the mountains near Asheville, NC. You will never have returned to New Olreans, even this deli will no longer exsist. In the Mountains you will be surrounded by animals you love and love you, in a cabin, in a place so remote it will shock people. You will buy only hypoallergenic toilet paper, cook all your meals, and use a toilet that composts poo. You will know how to identify trees by their bark and plants you can eat in the forest. You will never eat this Jambalaya again."
23 year old Leslie will frown hard about the Jambalaya, but smile a big grin about all the rest. She will say "That sounds really fucking cool."*
Hey Ya'll! My computer had gotten a really lame ass virus (security tool & malware) and was in the shop all week! .... But I am now back online with bunches of good, better, and some ugly to share... fun mushrooms, fun insects, and nasty litter in the creek....
Hey Ya'll - sorry I didn't get to share with ya this weekend, but I actually went out of my forest ova' to Big Sandy Mush (my old haunt) for a good Ole' 4th of July Party.... Tomorrow I am going to show you the epic wins and fails of cooking meat & veggies in an Earth Oven ( cooking straight down in the ground!)
PS- to my many friends who have MCS, yep that is me holding a sparkler and being around fireworks! I am way way healthier (but i still think fireworks are way way bad for the environment!)
Decay doesn't have to take 100 years, sometimes just in your own life span humans can build things, and watch their tiny personal empire fall to pieces. There's always a hidden story, a mini drama, a loss, forgotten time or sometimes a death these places hold onto... but for the blue shack not very much longer.
Ya might notice there isn't any No Trespassing signs on this property, and that is because it is for sale - under $100,000 with 13 acres! ( If you want to know where it's located in Western North Carolina, send me an email.)
The house is caving in. Literally. Porch posts leaning into a V shape, if you step on the covered porch floor boards your foot will go through it. Windows are broken, wood is bending, pieces of the roof are falling off.... yet it still holds it's bright blue spirit, you can still read some of the dreams that were afloat when it was built.
The back of the house pushes up to a rather steep hill, which is probably why the blue paint has washed off, the wall is pushing outward under the weight of the roof.... even a piece of the whole back wall has opened up and a freakin' lawn chair is poking out! Somehow that is creepy.
Peeking into the windows, I didn't find much on the inside of the house --- the usual anticipation to see something beautiful in it's last run of decay was not really even there...
Unless you feel a toilet seat is beautiful....
The ceiling is peeling off in sheets, which shows the rafters.... the rafters are the only thing about the structure that still looks stable. "Stable" being used real loosely.
Since there was 13 more acres of mystery to explore, I set off up the long winding road that led back up the side of the mountain. Plants & wildlife abound...
EDIBLE, MEDICINAL, and NATIVE PLANTS :::::::::
The Fiddle Head Fern... Edible when it first shoots up in the spring.Raspberries!!! Mmmmmm - the berries will pop out those hairy shells....
Blackberries ..... about to be ripe!
Woodland Nettles and Jewelweed growing in patches together.... ( so if the nettles sting you, you can put the jewelweed on your skin to sooth it!)
Pokeberry.... not yet ready to use for dye, but the white flowers turn into dark purple berries. You can eat the young plant in the spring, but not the berries or the mature plant (although i have heard people debate this!)
Bloodroot! My favorite native plant eva' ! The root is used for dye and medicine.
Mountain Mint?? Some kind of minty, menthol, bee balm smelling herb that grows in the woods here....
More HUMAN STUFF :::::::
In places along the road there was old fencing, from when this land was most likely a pasture with some type of domesticated animal... I have heard stories from locals about how their parents or grandparents made pasture by digging around & cutting roots of trees then having them pulled by mules out the ground. That's a shit ton of work! There was also a small hidden barn, with wide open slats --- it was totally covered in thorny wild roses making it impossible for me to go inside or get near it!
In a lil' nook I saw this cinder block built contraption, that upon closer examination I realized was an old spring water box....
I would not be drinking the water from this thing anymore- it was full of mud and I did not see water in it... either that spring has run dry or the box was old enough to have a leak down below.
ANIMAL EVIDENCE::::::
Even though there had been a big huge rain storm just last night, I still found a few bits of evidence left by the wildlife on that property.
First, coyote scat (poop) totally rained on so hard that most the poop part was gone and all that was left was the huge hair glob left from the little critters it had eaten.
Then a fresh deer track in the mud, it slid a little downward because of the steep part of the path...
right next to the deer track was a patch of jewelweed (see the pic below) that the tops of the plants were eaten off....
THE ROAD ENDS :::::::::
The long long long road ended at the top of a ridge, which behind the trees you could see lots of mountains.
On my way back down I stopped to take a pic with the rocks being exposed from the erosion along the road... I LOVE big funky rocks! ANd I loooooove (not) trespassing. :)
Do ya remember when you were a kid, and there was always some woman who was considered the neighborhood witch? There were all these requirements, evidence, cues to what made her a witch - what made her house, her yard the one you were sure to never touch for fear of being cursed, killed, or even eaten alive... a criteria that kinda crosses borders state to state, kid to kid - they all agree who's the witch. The two major factors that lead up to becoming the neighborhood witch are (1.) you have to be a single woman who (2.) never had children ( obviously because you hate kids and put curses on them, plus you are cursed and that's why ya can't have them) - she has to be single cause no man is dumb enough to marry a real witch, for she would be more powerful then him. BUT, there are many sub facts too, that prove the woman is a for sure 100% witch who will Get Ya' if she finds you near her house.... and I fit them all. The darker, the blacker your hair the more witch you have in you (although it happens from time to time a single childless woman with blond hair will be the feared and accused)...
But even worse is if she has creepy shit around her house, like my chicken feet hanging from my front door... (other possible creepy shit consists of things like broken flowers pots and/or dead plants, too many smashed bugs, dog poop that never gets picked up, she never goes out or to church --- i don't fit all these but they are good examples!)
Another sub fact about the neighborhood witch is she always lives ALONE in the house that seems really odd for the 'hood it's in - either it's really big or way too small, a dark mansion or a ridiculous shack. I am the latter....
My neighborhood witch when I was little lived behind my grandparents house on Florence Dr. in New Orleans, she was a single woman who never came outside, she had no kids and kept her big creepy house really dark with no landscaping - there was always dog shit in her yard and for some reason this neglect meant to my kid logic she was for sure a witch who was stealing animals & probably eating people's dogs. Touching her grass would leave a curse on you forever...
keep ya'll hangin' on a limb... but I AM BACK, and oh what it took to get back online ----> A whole new computer, downed trees & alot of serendipity (like chance, coincidence and universe alignment type shit)....
I have so much to show ya too!!!! What should I share first ::: the bat, the rare snapping turtle, the building of my gray water system, the awesome CSA farm I joined, the pretty moths, my cedar chest I built>>>???? Tell me!
...from the fallen tree I lay on, I don't see much sky. Mostly trees reaching their leaves towards a sun that only comes down into small blotches of light. The plants and animals don't seem to mind.
Things I thought of while laying on the tree trunk:
Taking a nap
All the creatures that have walked through that very spot
If I will fall off
What it's like to never have 'human' needs (like groceries or toaster ovens)
If what all the old people in the FOXFIRE book say about how people were happier back when they took care of themselves without using any money is true?
Sometimes I want to change my life. It's possibly a habit I have developed over the years... made worse by changing seasons (which I did not experience growing up in the tropical south.)
On my way back down I stopped to take a pic with the rocks being exposed from the erosion along the road... I LOVE big funky rocks! ANd I loooooove (not) trespassing. :)
