21 Saturday Jul 2018
Posted in Notes from Three of Earth Farm
Tags
#ThreeofEarthFarm, airbnb, plum streusel muffins, Three of Earth Farm, Three of Earth Farm Airbnb
There’s a new muffin at Three of Earth Farm Airbnb in Centralia, Washington! There are openings in August. It’s a great time to visit the Pacific Northwest and take a day trip or two to mountains or ocean or one of many great hikes (including right beyond your door). Pass the word!
Plum-Walnut Streusel muffin with handpicked plums from the neighbor’s tree.
19 Tuesday Jun 2018
Tags
#livinginmychlldhoodhome, #ThreeofEarthFarm, cleaning out the garden, death of a parent, gardening, home, nostalgia, returning to childhood home, Three of Earth Farm, Three of Earth Farm Airbnb
It was one of those mornings when you’re just glad to be alive: cool and fragrant, birds singing, flicker pecking, doves waking up, owl calling goodnight. With the promise of way too much heat, the last two days I have left my chair in the living room corner early after my 5:00 (or so) bed-leaving, staying only long enough for coffee.
Yesterday I took the second cup of coffee to the barn door in the just-risen sun. I haven’t done that for a long time. Of course then I noticed the blackberry vines still cruising into the barn, and the bramble around my sitting log, and the trail on each side of the barn I still haven’t cleaned out.
I tossed out the rest of my now-cooled coffee—the second cup is never as good anyway—and went down to the mailbox in the garden to get my leather gloves. I pulled the native blackberry vines out from in and around the barn, my mother would be appalled, and cleared enough of one trail at least enough to walk through, and the other one more thoroughly. Not done yet, there is still the pile to haul off, but I’m checking it off my list.
Off course, by then, the sun was shining on the house gardens and I had to do the planned activity in the sun after all. Also not finished. Need to get the St. John’s wort beaten back. Maybe after it sheds its sunny little personal fireworks display that are just beginning to pop.
Today, up early again, I did not ignore the voice telling me I would be so happy if I cleaned the Airbnb suite for tonight’s guests before I went out to work. I should have ignored it. The target was the garden my sister created when she moved back to the homestead sixteen years ago. By the time I got out there it was already too hot for pulling run-rapant thyme, euphorbia, and creeping Jenny; and wandering sweet peas and more blackberry vines that will take over the house if not beaten back. I persevered and reached my goal of cleaning out and mulching half of it.
Rebecca and I have each had our gardens to create, while letting our mother be in charge of her pet area. My garden, dubbed “the garden where nothing will grow,” because that’s what my mother said would happen if I wasted my money trying, is looking good. It could have used a few more plants from this year’s Master Gardeners’ sale. Next year.
Now I’m having to care for hers too and she would not, I think, be happy with what I have done—or, in truth, not done. I tried, finally, on Sunday, to get it under control after ignoring it all spring—pulling out all the ^@#* lemon balm and buttercups I could get my hands on, and of course, the blackberries—but quickly discovered I can’t fix it this year. It needs a professional, and a make-over. Maybe I’ll just let it go rogue.
As I finished for today, I had one of those moments while hauling the wheelbarrow full of detritus to the dumping ground: my mother is gone. Forever gone. What about the questions I hadn’t asked? The ones I don’t know yet I wanted to ask? She’s gone—two months on Thursday. My father is gone—23 years on Thursday. I can’t ever ask them anything. Never ever again. The answers died with them.
It’s inconceivable to me.
I can only guess, and watch for clues on this property they poured their heart and soul into for half a century. It will also ask the questions.
One of the questions I did ask my mother, just a few weeks before she left, was if my father did all this work himself, even as his body began to betray him. “Yes,” she said.
That is also inconceivable to me.
Tomorrow I’m taking the day off from work to celebrate my birthday on a hike in the Gifford Pinchot NF. A short one, with minimal elevation gain (Flutterby will do the bulk of it). My body is tired.
And now the sun is setting on my favorite garden and I’m heading toward my last sleep before my 66th anniversary.
The sun has set on my mother too, and some moments I am overcome with, not grief exactly, but disbelief. And nostalgia. Nostalgia for the halcyon days of my childhood, heightened by caring for this place where I set down roots, pulled them up, transplanted them, and brought them back to their native beginnings.
05 Tuesday Jun 2018
Tags
Adventure Log, Gaian Tarot, Joanna Powell Colbert, Kjerstin Secord, Lummi Island, Notes from Three of Earth Farm, REC Retreats, straw bale house, talismans, tarot, Tarot and Talisman, three of earth, Three of Earth Farm, Three of Earth Farm Airbnb
I took a break from memorial service planning and preparation to return to Lummi Island and my friend Joanna Powell Colbert’s straw bale house. Lummi Island hangs out in Puget Sound just off the coast from Bellingham—up there near Canada—in the San Juan archipelago. It’s just over 9 square miles in size with a permanent population of about 800.
Last time I went just for island and writing time with my friend, taking a personal retreat from caregiving. This time I attended one of Joanna’s workshops, Tarot and Talismans. When I registered for this workshop, I was aware of the possibility I would have to cancel if my mother was in crisis. To hold my space in the circle with her gone now, was both freeing and bittersweet.
I fell in love with Joanna’s earth-honoring Gaian Tarot deck some years ago when I met her at my first Whidbey Island writing retreat, when I was at the front end of this longer-than-expected caregiving journey. I had never been a tarot user, but it was so easy to relate to Joanna’s natural world colored pencil interpretation of the traditional archetypes, that I have become a believer in their usefulness in helping me examine my life and consider my future.
The workshop was held at REC Retreats (Recharge, Enrich, Create) on the island, a one- and two-day weekend retreat center in the home of owner Kjerstin Secord looking into the face of Koma Kulshan (Mt. Baker). It’s something I hope for the future of my home, and Kjerstin generously spent a richness of time on her sun-drenched deck the day before the workshop to sit with me and talk about her experiences. So watch for that to join my Airbnb at Three of Earth Farm!
I didn’t sleep well that night, terrified of what I am proposing to do. Who do I think I am that I can pull something like this off? No, I can’t do it. I’m not good enough, smart enough, committed enough, young enough, connected enough.
Morning came and we seventeen women began in circle and intuitively introduced ourselves not by what we do, but by who we are: our wounds, our healing, our griefs, our joys. (Stunningly, there was another Gretchen in the circle. I have never in my almost 66 years had to put my initial after my name to distinguish between two people of the same first name.)
Our morning activity was to draw one card from our deck and, after examination of the details, symbols, and qualities it suggested, give the figure in the image a title and write a blessing. Later, in partnership with another participant, we wrote a blessing for each other. It was a powerful moment to bless a stranger and receive blessing in return.
We were given the choice of choosing a card randomly or looking at them face up and choosing one that spoke to us in that moment. I started to spread them on the table to draw from face down, then changed my mind. I put the cards back in a stack and turned it over to begin looking at each card for one calling my name. The top card was the three of earth. Tears gathered in the corners of my eyes and my heart opened. Of course that card chose me. In the death of my mother and my conversation the day before with Kjerstin about my future, this was exactly the one I needed. Maybe I can do this. The Universe will help me.
I chose Three of Earth for the name of this property—and my future here—because in the tarot something begins in the aces (my parents’ purchase of this property in 1960), is challenged in the twos (the death of my father in 1995 and my mother’s determination to take care of the family home as best she could), and is manifested in the threes (the next generation accepting, for now, the mantle). The threes also express the energies of abundance, harmony, community, pleasure, and manifestation—my dream of sharing this land with others and creating something of lasting value. Three is a mystical, magical number, as is this piece of earth.
In the afternoon, we made blessing beads and talismans. My mother’s celebration was on my mind, but I turned my focus to the farther future and found the Three of Earth card again in the box of tarot cards Joanna provided for us to tear up, asking for blessings on this path.
My friend Melissa and I boarded the tiny ferry in the spitting rain on Sunday and headed back down I-5 from our magical island time.
I’m back home now, watching my own mountain appear and disappear in the clouds, readying myself for the week ahead. Family will begin arriving today with my sister, my children on Thursday, Jo Ann’s on Friday. Some extended family and many friends will come together to celebrate my mother’s long life, lovingly planned by my sisters and me, on Saturday. And then it will be over. Or maybe it’s never really over.
26 Saturday May 2018
Tags
#livinginmychlldhoodhome, #ThreeofEarthFarm, gardening, nostalgia, Three of Earth Farm, Three of Earth Farm Airbnb, TV antennae
It was on my list; has been for a year at least. Just not for today. Today was trail clean out day. But all of sudden, there it was, calling to be done. I dropped my sickle and loppers and got the ladder and the wire cutter.
We didn’t have a television until I was in junior high. Well, for a while in fourth grade we had my grandmother’s black and white, I don’t know why. Then we got our own TV when I was in seventh grade and went back to watching Lawrence Welk and the Lennon Sisters when we visited our granny.
I suppose we had rabbit ears back then. I don’t think the antennae showed up until I had left home and my parents went high tech. It was mounted on a tower at the highest place on the property, some distance from the house, in what was then the edge of the horse pasture. Now it’s a grove of trees and there is a satellite dish below the house, but mostly I watch Netflix.
Pieces of the aluminum antennae blew down over the years, bits every winter I suppose. I collected them a couple years ago, from where they’d lain dormant in the underbrush, spray painted them, and put them in the garden. They are practically buried now because I haven’t cleaned out the bed this year. Yeah, it’s on my list too. The sweet peas are in takeover mode.
When I had 40 dead trees cut in the grove that used to be a pasture a few years back, I had the woodsmen take down the precipitously leaning tower too. But the cable remained tacked, disconnected and useless, onto the side of house, stretched across the yard, up over the trail to the meadow, threaded through trees, tacked high on a pole midway through (it’s still tacked to the pole; I didn’t want to drag the ladder up there). Yards more lay on the ground after the antennae was removed.
Today I hauled out the ladder, leaned it up, and cut ‘er down. Another vestige of my past, gone. How is it that the removal of such a slender thread seems to have opened up the sky?
Meanwhile, the rhodies continue their best of show performance. I cleaned out the gravel path by the front door—another task not on the list—after deciding not to prune the ancient rhododendron overgrowth, the blooms are too pretty and still coming. I hope they last until my mother’s service in two weeks.
The bathroom floor got redone last week—it’s beautiful—and the 1960 chrome towel rods have been replaced with polished nickel. Best of all, when I took out the horrid towel tree by the tub in preparation for the work, I realized I didn’t have to put it back! Now there’s a nice nickel rod in its place.
And this week the sagging corner of the deck got a new beam and an additional post, replacing the rotten beam. I can have a dance party on the deck now. And have added painting to my to do list.
I’m following in my mother’s footsteps, getting stuff done; but only one path got cleared today, the one that goes through the woods that didn’t used to be woods. Only one of my mother’s beloved wild tiger lilies lost its life in the process. I’m mourning that one though.
I did finish up the service guide for my mother’s memorial service, and cut a few words from my eulogy. So there’s that. As my sisters and I plan for the last hurrah, life goes on here on the hill. This blog post wasn’t on my list either.
15 Thursday Mar 2018
Posted in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph
Tags
#ilovewhereilive, Adventure Log, Grays Harbor, Mt. St. Helens, Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge, Olympic Mountains, Pacific Ocean, Salzer Valley, Seminary Hill Natural Area, sunrises, Three of Earth Farm, Three of Earth Farm Airbnb, Westport WA
It’s been an aggravating week of technology failure, including (still unresolved) loss of internet at home. On the up side is WiFi is back at the Manor, and along with it, Alexa is back in Mama’s room. She loves Alexa. Visitors are treated to her rendition of Star Spangled Banner. Now I just have to learn how to program her to do things that Mama would enjoy and that would be helpful. More technology. Ugh.
I’ve had a full two weeks of guests in the Airbnb, a good thing; and lots of cleaning, laundry, and baking.
The happy news is the rains stopped on Monday and rather than do the yard and garden work that is getting out of hand, I got out of town for a drive through the valleys of Lewis County to Grays Harbor and the edge of the continent.
And a best friend from Raleigh made a 24-hour visit on her way to British Columbia. On the way from and back to the airport, we stopped at Nisqually Wildlife Refuge. In between walked in the woods behind my home. We talked and talked, diving quickly into the depths of our lives. I love where I live. And I miss my dear friends. A few hours with Grace reminded me of the loss.
And then there is this…
Highway 6, heading west at dawn.
Morning has broken.
Dancing.
The view from sea.
Nisqually Wildlife Refuge
Thousands of Canada geese flew in.
Raindrops on reflection
Grace and me in the Seminary Hill Natural Area.
No place like home.
13 Saturday Jan 2018
Tags
#notreadyforspring, #ThreeofEarthFarm, airbnb, heather, Mt. St. Helens, Notes from Three of Earth Farm, Salzer Valley, sedum, Seminary HIll, signs of spring, Three of Earth Farm, Three of Earth Farm Airbnb
#Not Ready for Spring
It’s been a soggy January, but the Pacific Northwest does not disappoint: there are always some spectacular mid-winter days. This is the weekend. The forecast today was 59 balmy degrees.
I cleaned the roof, utilizing my new ladder. Abandoned splitting wood, couldn’t do it even with my new ax, and hauled more small stuff down from the woods up the hill instead. Since I was up there, I cleaned out the frozen chard in the garden and the dead pineapple sage and pulled weeds out of the root vegetable bed.
It was a lovely day, and it was good to be outside; but I am not ready for spring yet. My cocoon is still cozy and my wings aren’t ready to fly. Besides, I have fire wood. But there’s another day of sunshine, and I’m not working this one. Tomorrow I’m going on a wee adventure: sunrise (?) at Nisqually Wildlife Refuge. The rain returns on Monday.
