Hey hey, the end of another day.

The community had a "fun day" today at Trillium, which is a wonderful arts and ecology center about a half-hour's drive from Full Bloom. The parents put the kids on their backs, and we went hiking up through their gardens, past beautiful former trout farms and rustic cabins, meandering streams. The poison oak is really starting to leaf out, and there were lots of beautiful flowers -- trilliums for sure, plus bleeding hearts, lilacs, shooting stars, and some others I couldn't identify.
Trillium is one of my favorite places so far -- the little meadows, the crystal-clear blue ponds, water running everywhere. There's something so peaceful and quiet about the place. And the couple that own it, Chant and Susannah, are great. Chant is so lively, and his knowledge of the little Applegate area is so deep, including the natural world, indigenous and early white American history, and a long involvement in the environmental activist world to save the area from further logging attempts. Susannah I don't know as much about, but she's been very kind and gracious with me.

After the hike we picnicked at Trillium and then drove home. Then it was back out to the herb/flower plot with Eden to continue the work of creating beds and irrigation ditches. Both of us are feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of the work that has to be done there right now. In a few weeks, when the beds are all dug and the starts in the greenhouse are all planted, it will be alot more mellow -- just weeding, watering, then harvestin starting sometime in July. But now we have bed after bed that has to be dug out on contour, in order that the trenches between beds can be relatively level and not slope off too much. That way we can fill each trench full with water, and that water will seep its way into the adjacent beds, watering our flowers and herbs. It's hard because Eden's been gone alot, and I'm trying to work as much as possible on other projects here to make enough dough to support myself, and my work with Eden seems like alot, considering we won't be making much money off it this year. I wish we had started this whole process last fall, but of course I wasn't here then. So it's a big learning experience. We're thinking of taking a couple of full weekdays next week to finish off the planting/trenching job.

....Other than that, things are moving right along. Work at the common building continues to go apace. The foundation is done, and 12"-diameter, 22'-long wooden posts have started to be sanded, grooved and set in place to hold up the roof. So far four posts are up, held in place by brackets set in the foundation. I assume we'll have most of the rest of the posts up by the end of the week.

....We've been losing chickens to a skunk the last week or so. We've already lost some this spring to a coyote, so there's talk of buying some more, but I don't know when. Matt, I believe, is intending to shoot the skunk. The one night he went out to try and kill it though, it didn't show up. The skunk had made a whole in the fencing and killed a few last week.

.... We also finished the main part of the deer fencing last week, which was completed when Matt welded a top piece to the front gate. There's still top wire to do along some sections, but for all intensive purposes we are now deer-proofed! It allowed us to take down some fencing we'd had near the main house to protect some veggies and fruit trees. Also Ryan's planted out a bunch of vegetable starts -- lettuce, cabbage, broccoli. I sowed some flowers earlier and will probably plant them out near the house this week as well. There's a new kitchen garden between the common building and Ryan/Eden's cottage, but unfortunately half of it has been commandeered by the crew working on the common building, to be used to stack the wooden posts used for the stick-framing. So we have half the space we thought we'd have. But it's still alot of space.


Can't think of anything to say now. Bye!