miscellaneous

Things worth jotting down:

• Rita and I are painting the dining room coral with blood orange trim
• the kitchen is no longer covered in calico apple wallpaper (no, it wasn't retro)
• Bill Murray has started to headbutt the dogs
• we were partially compensated for our work at the fake farm so I bought myself some tights and a new battery for the laptop. Living the high life!
• Samantha and Jacob have either forgotten how to escape the fence or grew too big to do it over the course of a week
• the chickens stopped laying
• Karl has been sleeping on my pillow every night
• we've decided not to raise rabbits for the time being since they're depressing to care for locked up in cages (and also since we tend to forget to feed them everyday but make excuses like, it's a mental block, or... it was raining, or... I woke up too late)
• the bees have started to transform their sugar water into honey

(dear roommates)

Not the best quality of photos here, but I deem them blog-worthy. Who else lives with a kitty that likes to smootch fish? I didn't think so.

Jamie and our roommate Mike have been developing a very adorable bromance lately. I like that word. (I also like that I'm making them self conscious if they're reading this.) When I came home from class one day last week, the two of them had just finished cleaning up the kitchen together, had started on some beers together, and proceeded to go fishing together. But I'm not complaining one bit. That was one delicious dinner. And these two know how to cook!

Rita, I think we need to amp up the girlyness around our house. Let's get some cucumbers and facial mud and matching towels. ;)

beekeeping

Thanks to some very kind sponsors, I am taking a beekeeping course! I will admit that even though I don't have a degree and don't plan on getting one, I definitely see myself taking more non-credit courses at the community college in the future. There have been three classes so far, and I'm loving it! For only a $60 class registration fee, I am a member of our local Beekeepers' Association, have a huge textbook, and will be paired with a set of mentors in case I need help. (I needed it months ago!)

I still can't believe it, but I picked up a frame full of bees with my bare hands at the field day at Hashawha Park! That afternoon I was much more confident to go into our existing hive. (I still suited up though considering I was alone...) More on that experience another time. Let's just say I'm proud to be a (novice) beekeeper. These tiny creatures are just incredible and I'm already feeling sad thinking about the months I won't be able to check out their hive during the winter.

the house next door

Come November we'll have new neighbors and while it's terribly exciting to see new life come to an old house, I can't help but be a little sad that so many of the old details will no longer be there. I had a love affair since day one with that blue floral wallpaper in the kitchen. Seriously, I saved a scrap when our new neighbors tore it down. Must. Recreate. Somehow.

Pawnee was happy to let Rita and I walk through the house snapping photo after photo. Over the course of the month, she's shed many a tear, rediscovering objects and memories that had been lost since the days she was a child growing up there. Originally, it was a log cabin, built in the late 1700's (...a nice tie to our old residence). Over the years it was expanded two more times. Needless to say, there are many layers of flooring and even more of wallpaper!

Though, I think the most special part of that house is how happy the girls who lived there become when they talk about their childhood. Not sure if I shared this before, but in the 50's Shawnee, Pawnee, and Cherokee's parents moved from Baltimore to start a farm out in the country. The mother looked at the house alone, the father looked at the land alone. The third time, when they went back together, they bought it. After moving in, the father ripped up the carpeting only to find the wood floors in terrible condition. ("Wife, you let me buy a rotting home!") There were literally huge, gaping holes in them! But they replaced them with plywood and awesome retro linoleum of sorts- the kind you see in dated middle schools, the kind that fits right in with mustard yellow lockers and baby blue bathroom tiles. Just one example...

So much character, in the people and the objects they surrounded themselves with.

fog

I've never seen weather like the kind we have on this land. The reservoir blankets the valley in a sweet, musty, chilled fog this time of year. It smells like forest mushrooms and moss. The occasional breath of wind that comes with it is reminiscent of decayed leaves and honeycomb and every so often, carries a whiff of damp wool. In the morning the pond and the surrounding grasses shimmer with dew and steamy mist. The sun soon rises and clears away this magic, but if it's a rainy day, the clouds lower themselves once again upon the meadow. Our sheep graze in a dream-state, wandering through the mist, eyes lowered, lashes dripping with condensation like spiderwebs at dawn. What might they be thinking about on sleepy days like these?