Drip Irrigation

Good morning. I’ve been out searching for a rake (found it right where Seth said it might be; wondering why he and Cedric couldn’t put it away) and moving water in the garden. Plus washing dishes, making a smoothie, and blowing my nose. If I limit outdoor time at this point I might be able to avoid a full-scale itch-and-run fest. I was going to finish planting stuff but the small amount of time spent outside kind of changed my mind.

However, watering the garden started me thinking about drip irrigation which started me thinking about our garden in New Mexico (the big one out at Escrito). No one had a lot of money to spare then. No one. But we managed to get a LOT of drip irrigation supplies. This was due in part to being able to get a discount from Construction Supply where Dan was employed but it was due mostly to basketball.

The gang in New Mexico. Daniel, Laura, Joanna, and Freckles our goat. She went walking with us all over the place. This was Church Rock.

Where we lived in New Mexico, if you needed money for something worthwhile, you could host a basketball tournament. I don’t know what any real figures were but I think we can come up with an idea of how it worked at least.

You advertise. This is almost free, the only cost involved is time involved making and distributing fliers, and the cost of printing. There is the rental of the gym or whatever it was called where the games were played, say $100. There are entry fees from each team, say $25 (that’s $5 per person). Food must be purchased (think Navajo tacos, frybread, and soda) as well as plates, utensils, etc. Everyone is willing to buy Navajo tacos and frybread and soda. Lastly, there is a fee to watch, maybe $2 per person, under 12 free.

Say ten teams enter. That’s $250.

Say 100 people come to watch each day (and it lasts two days). That’s $200 per day or a total of $400.

Say food service costs are $200 and your food sales are $500. That’s $300.

Minus $100 for rent.

That’s a total of $850. Not bad, even if my numbers are way off, and I think they might be. That will buy a few drip irrigation supplies as well as seeds.

Not to mention, there is this sense of community that is so completely lacking everywhere else I’ve lived. It really is an awesome thing.

I think I'm Back

Good morning! There isn’t much better than waking up to bird noises outside. The only problem is that for some reason they are more easily heard from the bedroom than from the dining table in spite of the fact that there is only one window open in the bedroom and several downstairs. Still, it’s so cheerful; just knowing they are out singing and generally making noise is a good thing.

Also, the sun is shining even though it hasn’t risen above the tops of the trees. The humidity is something I’d rather ignore at 83% but can’t. Our high today is projected to be 65° and that is something I can live with.

Yesterday afternoon I met with Katie and Ranee. Katie emailed me Sunday to let me know that they feel I would be a good fit for their practice in spite of the fact that I haven’t finished a complete year of STMI schooling. The fact that I took the Massachusetts Midwifery Alliance introduction to midwifery and that I do doula work and have read hundreds of pages of books about birth and pregnancy and postpartum has made up the difference.

This is from Wednesday, June 1, taken at Crystal Lake Cemetery in Gardner.

Yesterday we met for lunch in Athol. Ranee was there, Katie was running late (children were involved so that’s completely understandable) so Ranee and I were able to chat. Currently my duties will be to attend prenatal and postpartum visits with them at least two days a week and continue schooling. It seems apparent that the life of a midwife can cause marital strife due to the fact that a midwife can sometimes be gone for days at a time. If I can’t handle a little marital strife, I might as well just lay down and die right now. I haven’t gotten to where I am now without it and I can’t imagine there won’t be more. I do have a slight benefit in that my children are as old as they are and don’t require constant supervision.

After lunch, I went with Ranee to Royalston by Tully Lake and Doane’s Falls for a foraging expedition. It had poured there not long before and there were leaves and branches and all sorts of evidence of a pretty wild storm all over the road and as a result, the bugs were awful. Needless to say, the foraging didn’t last long. Still, it was a good opportunity to visit more and I think I’m really going to like Ranee. She and Katie are very different, but both committed to safeguarding birth and women and the process. One of the first things Ranee said to me is, “I have a gun in the car. Does that bother you?”

I laughed. A gun in the car bother me? No. Heck no.

This is also from Crystal Lake Cemetery.

An interesting part of the conversation involved the fact that I am Mormon. Ranee asked if the church is helping to pay for my schooling so I can attend the births of women at church. I didn’t laugh, but I wanted to; I did smile. While I am getting help from church to pay for the school part, I told her that I have taken it upon myself to educate members of my church about birth and the way it can and ought to be in most circumstances. I told her that while faith is one of the basic tenants of the faith, so to speak, and while many women have great faith, they seem to have lost faith in their ability to give birth without medical interventions. In fact, women at church seem to be very mainstream western medicalized when it comes to birth and I think this is incredibly sad. Brigham Young said, “Here is a growing evil in our midst. It will be so in a little time that not a woman in all Israel will dare to have a baby unless she can have a doctor by her.” This has happened. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not completely against hospitals and doctors; they do have their place. I think it is incredibly sad that women who have such faith in so many aspects of life have so little to none in the birth process that they put their trust in a very broken medical system and then come out the other side saying, “I would have died had I not been in the hospital.” Enough said. For now.

This is a flower from the track at Fitchburg State University. Joseph needed to use a bathroom so we were wandering around looking for one. Once we did, I was waiting for him and taking a picture of a flower seemed like a logical thing to do.

I needed to do something last night but couldn’t remember what until Paul had left to go to a town meeting. He got home safely and ready to spend the night in his own bed. I guess so; he went to bed about the same time I did, was asleep before I was, and is still asleep. The town meeting was about filling the sandpit near our house with toxic waste and from what he said, was also filled with all the political nonsense you might expect. I’m pretty sure he said it was voted down which is good. We don’t need tons of toxic anything that near to where we live. We have enough to deal with with allergies and such as it is.

Once he left I remembered I was going to meet the sisters at church so I could say goodbye to Hermana Barney. She’s leaving us for Lowell. I am so glad to have met and gotten to know her. She has such an enthusiasm for life and learning; it’s really a wonderful experience to see. So I did that and when I got home it was time for bedtime routine activities.

Grandma is moving in just one day more than two weeks. I’ve spent a few hours talking to her in the past week and that has been really wonderful. I’m looking forward to her being moved because she’ll be able to be connected, so to speak, via internet and that can make communicating so much faster and easier than writing letters. I am not thrilled that I am so far away that I am not able to be of any help with her move.

I am going to go for now. I may have a picture or two for this. Joseph and I went walking at the rec field yesterday but took no pictures so I’ll have to see what there is that I haven’t posted.

Have a wonderful day!

Prison Camp

On Monday, May 23, Joseph and I went out for his first official hike for the new leaderboard. We clocked in about 3.75 miles exploring at the Prison Camp in Rutland. This is a trip that I would love to park at Barre Falls Dam and hike down and back for a round trip total of about eight miles. Driving down is about twenty-two miles roundtrip. To me, it makes more sense to turn it into a nice day hike.

Joseph forced to wear his 100-mile shirt.

Somehow we managed to find a Hunger Games arena. Except I don't recall they let you know you were being watched; they just did it.

Burn calories, not fuel. Anyway, we'd been there once before and it's just as cool now as it was then but maybe even more so because we discovered and explored the hospital and the supervisors house this time. Last time we were confined to the cell block, tunnel behind it, and root cellar. Sometime when it is less buggy, I'd like to go back (maybe do the BFD-PC hike) and do more exploring.

Trees growing where there once was a hospital.

A few trails but they certainly don't circumnavigate the entire hospital. Somehow the partying people manage.

Lots of history to the land here.
From what I can tell by the maps I've looked at, it was either some faction of the Wampanoag or Mohegan or some combination that lived in the area pre-European colonization. I sometimes think it's hilarious that we go off on such tangents about saving all this history and get to the point we can't touch anything when the peoples who lived prehistorically changed the landscape and each

This is what is left from a much larger complex including yard, dining area, etc.

Trees are where the supervisors house once stood.

successive people did the same. What did it look like originally? I mean, the mountains are tired here. They've been around for a very long time. Just imagine.
I love to imagine.

The view walking from the road to the house ruins.

Standing in a little alcove of the foundation.

Fast forward to 1903 when the General Court (I'm guessing Massachusetts since that is where Rutland is) established a camp for prisoners. They would reclaim and improve "wasted" lands. How did they become wasted I would like to know.

Sidewalk leading to the house.

An old orchard to the north of the hospital.

Many buildings were built (they surely didn't just appear, for sure) and prisoners serving time for minor offenses such as drunkenness moved in. They somehow found the motivation to create a working farm of 150 acres. I bet they really didn't have a choice. At least not at first. Well, you know, they HAD a choice but it was probably something like: "Go weed the potatoes or you get solitary confinement." Choice. Those potatoes? They got shipped to the state prison. Groovy, dude.

We heard this guy moving around and were glad he (or she) was a porcupine and not something else (you know, like a bear cub or a skunk).

There was a dairy barn that seems to have been home to 60 Holsteins. Between milk being sold in Worcester and selling eggs (I'm guessing from chickens although it doesn't specify) the prison had a yearly income of around $16,000. That's not too shabby.
In 1907, a 30 bed hospital had been built. Tuberculosis was a big deal and prisoners who contracted it got to stay at this new hospital. Lucky prisoners. The foundation isn't huge but it is quite interesting. It's fun to imagine what it looked like back then.

The root cellar.

For some reason, the people in Boston and Worcester like to drink water. At least, I'm guessing they do because so much of the water in this state is part of a drainage area for some water supply and as such has to be protected. Such was the case for the Prison Camp and Hospital. They were abandoned on November 30, 1934.

The root cellar looking out.

If you talk to the guys at Nestle, they'll tell you that water isn't one of our rights so we should be able to do whatever the heck we want in these drainage areas. Right?

Just the view from where we parked by the cell block.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun exploring. If you come visit us before we leave (which will be who knows when), we'll take you there.

Cook's Canyon Wildlife Sanctuary

I have been doing a lot of reflective writing in my journal that hasn't made it to this or any other blog and that is fine. That said, I know I've mentioned recently, but don't remember where, that I love history. I've always loved history even if it had to be on my terms rather than a prescribed regimen such as we typically find in a classroom. For this reason, I really thought that I would like New England. And in some ways, I do. There is a lot of history here. There is a lot of evidence of the history of the European colonists here. While I do like learning about these things, I have come to more deeply understand that there is a lot of history in California where I grew up, in New Mexico and Idaho where I've lived, and here in Massachusetts. A lot more than meets the eye in most cases.
What I have discovered is that I really love the history of the land. Part of this history necessarily includes people since people cannot live without the land and I do enjoy that as well but not in and of itself, more as a part of the history of the land.
Through letterboxing and hiking for the Cub Scout Hiking Leaderboard, I have seen more of the natural history of this area than I would otherwise have. On Friday, May 27, Joseph and I visited Cook's Canyon. I obtained permission to plant letterboxes there and we drive by the entrance every time we go to Quabbin Regional Middle/High School so I figured we needed to check it out. We planted a letterbox series of three happy boxes and took some pictures while enjoying the beautiful (if buggy) day.

This is a cool hydrant but I still find it odd to run across these somewhere like a Wildlife Sanctuary.

Dam.

Toad.

Joseph on one of the several bridges across muddy areas.

Another view of the dam.

A tree. It is still alive in spite of the fact that Joseph could have easily stood in the center.

Stone stairs leading....?

Graduation

Dear Everyone Who Reads This, or would had I been writing as of late,

Much has been happening lately, some of which precluded writing. There are just times and circumstances when writing isn’t . . . right.

I have spent much time contemplating the circumstances in which I find myself. As you may recall, I recently read Billy Idol’s book, Dancing With Myself. The takeaway lesson for me from that is to be yourself—don’t let what other people expect of or want from you get in the way of being yourself.

This is something I have struggled with most of my life and I’ve decided to stop. It is high time to allow myself to be myself. In this reflective state I have come to realize that at different times, different aspects of me were fairly true to self but never wholly and never completely. Add to this the fact that we change over time, and some days I’m not sure who I am.

There are some things I know and because of one of them, I am actually writing today and will actually post what I write.

Today is June 3, 2016. Today is the day when Daniel would be graduating from high school. Today is one more milestone that just isn’t happening.

Instead of getting everyone ready so we can go, I spent the day making log books for letterboxing. Eight of them. It was mostly fun and I actually started a few weeks ago when I separated out the piles of 3”x5” index cards and folded them in half in preparation. I actually marked and made holes in them yesterday and sewed three of them together. But today I sewed the rest of them together and got covers ready and glued them together and now they are waiting for tomorrow when the binder clips will come off and we’ll see the finished product.

Just a random pile of rocks we found when Seth, Joseph, and I were at Moore State Park on May 19.

Instead of worrying or spending any time thinking about what the future might hold, I planted corn in the garden with Joseph this morning. Seth helped me with the hose so it would reach all the way to the second bed of corn. Each bed that has been planted (only three) was watered and takes about an hour because I put the sprinkler on one end and let it run for 25-30 minutes and then move it to the other end.

Instead of, instead of, instead of. And yet, it didn’t hit me until Amena and Cedric got home. I thought Cedric had track practice today so I said, “No practice today?”

“No,” was his answer. “It’s graduation.”

Oh. Yeah.

Graduation.

Daniel’s graduation.

Except that Daniel graduated four years, ten months, and one day ago.

Does it seem macabre to you that I can randomly figure that out with very little thought?

Oh, the forever changes that can happen because of a split second.

Enjoy your life while I figure out who I am.