Sunday

Autumn Rain…

We’re spending the day inside listening to it, and to crackly opera on the little radio. I made blackberry vodka before the season ended for us to sip on days like this.

The stove is one, the house is cozily messy. I have plans to write when Petka naps, and plans to clean when inspiration hits. But inspiration rarely hits on rainy Sunday afternoons, and my cleaning can wait ‘til tomorrow.

I want to but a whole pile of books online and walk to collected them as they trickle in, one brown package after another. Then read them slowly in the dim evenings.

Letting Go

Everyone has a different thresh-hold for things. When what fills our house turns to clutter I lose the ability to see individuals in the crowd and begin filling big black bags with whatever I lay hands on. I’ve had to fish the checkbook out of the recycle bin before, one of my husband’s paychecks out of the trash, and just recently I almost donated my favorite black skirt because it’d gotten lost in the pile of rejected clothes. I’ve definitely regretted some of my purges - like the time I decided I would only buy records, and tossed all my cds, or the time I decided to give up makeup entirely. My enthusiasm gets the better of me sometimes; when I come to my senses I mourn my losses and move on, my memory isn’t good enough to mourn lost things for long.

      I like to purge my home seasonally. This autumn’s purge began yesterday, when I broke yet another wineglass and felt the need to clean and organize the rest of them. So far I’ve dumped a teapot that leaks, a dish Yarrow broke, five books I hate that have been taking up space in my shelves for a year, a collection of bent nails, and a few pans that didn’t store well in the shed. I love rediscovering my things when I purge, I have about a dozen frames in the shed, just waiting for pictures. I’m looking forward to making space for them in the yurt and in the kitchen.

Bohemian Mama: Naturally Clean

We were given a huge package of disposable wipers when Yarrow was born, and again at Christmas. They don’t last long. Primarily, they don’t last because they clean everything so well -especially the glass chimneys on our lanterns, dusty top shelves, and the outside of the tea-kettle. When they’re all used up, we go back to our cloth wipes and rediscover the fresh scent of our favorite bottom cleaning solution - witch hazel, calendula, aloe, and lavender, diluted with water, spritzed on, and wiped off with worn, cotton rags. I prefer our solution on Yarrow to whatever it is that cleans so well in the other wipes, though the wipes have never caused her harm. I like the thought that her new skin is being cleaned with fresh infusions of flowers instead of chemicals. I like the scent mixing with her milky baby-sweat and her patchouli-rose butt-balm. All that said, I’m kind of surprised she doesn’t ever seem to end up with a sore bottom, I’m not the most consistent in my little system. I have good intentions, but most changes seem to be distracted and quick, wondering where any of my lovely hand-made things are and then giving up and using nothing at all. Yarrow is a trooper, and seems to count my intentions as actions.

Springtime

When the snow melts, the whole world is brown and bedraggled for weeks, until the things long-buried by winter have been cleared away, trees bud, and green shoots spring out of the earth. Sometimes the new season is overwhelming, I want to stay within, arranging my little house and ignoring the ugly yard. I want to skip over mud-season and start the spring with a summer garden, thick grass under my feet and a dry road. But then the warm new wind blows in and I can smell the growing things all around. I step out the door and hours later come back from cleaning the chicken coop, preparing the little garden, or simply walking out under the trees.

Each morning, Yarrow and I clean house. While the sunlight warms the outside air, we dust shelves, air out trunks of clothings, and sweep dust out from under Luba, whose fear of the broom keeps her darting around the yurt. If I’m lucky, Yarrow naps well and I have an hour to write, to sew, to steep herbs in vodka, or to sleep myself with music all around. In the afternoon, we walk down to the mail-box and do our outdoor chores: collecting wood for processing or for bonfires, raking down the damage melting ice did to our road, and clearing the yard of winter debris. The chickens peck around us and Yarrow watches them with reserved judgment, Luba gets in the way - eagerly trying to help. The wind picks up by late afternoon and we head indoors to start the stove, make dinner and dream of summer.

In a small space, like the yurt, every inch is sacred. Mirrors sit atop trunks, trunks stack on each other, guitars nestle wherever they can. I relearn the importance of space every winter, making room for the abundance of wood we try to store indoors. This year we quickly filled the area beside the stove, stacking it high, and then moved on to clear out the other side of the stove and stack our logs there as well. Beside the stove is the best place for wood, the heat dries it quickly and the dust from the stove is a non-issue on logs about to be burned. But storing wood on both sides of the stove necessitated finding a new home for one of the bookshelves, and with little space to pick from, I chose to stack it on top of the cedar chest. The new arrangement works! The added height from the chest makes the shelf more interesting, and seeing it in this new light, I’m excitedly planning a new paint job on the piece, along with one of our other bookshelves. I have a feeling this spring will see a lot of new color added to the yurt.

My new planning involves moving out all the kitchen things and re-adjusting to make space for my roll-top desk and treadle sewing machine. I don’t doubt some layering will be involved, as well as - hopefully - stripping, sanding and repainting the dark desk. I want the two near each other, to create a sewing space, maybe (ideally) with a sewing model as well, because I don’t often work form a pattern, and having a figure to guide my sewing would save a good deal of trying on and guesswork. Will this all fit into my little house? I think so, but until everything is in the kitchen and out of my way, I can’t imagine how. Above all, I want to avoid the cluttered look. Recently I broke down and requested an invitation to join Pintrest, if I don’t give up on it right away, it should be an interesting way to keep track of ideas, and I’m hoping to be able to link it here and share what I see.

Rewriting posts I'd plan to put up this weekend is taking longer than I'd expected. Luckily the nights are cold, and I'm awake longer than I should be, while everyone sleeps..

I need to go through drawers, packing away what Yarrow has outgrown, what I've lost intrest in, and what my husband has destroyed in winter labor. My dressers are too full for my taste.

A few trees still have leaves so dry they rattle in the winter and haunt me on late night walks. In daylight they look lovely, at night they look like ghosts.

Laundry Day II

I've given up my little laundry barn. My attempt to go regularly - every Tuesday - to wash fell apart there thanks to too many people with no sense of ritual and too few machines to accomodate us all. One week I would have the place to myself, another week I would come in to find the whole place full, and a line formed for the washers. As I'm in the process of preparing for winter: bringing out our stored warm fabrics to clean and hang, I would rather go to a laundromat I can depend on. This week, I've rediscovered Betty's. It's clean, close, and free from overly-friendly attendants. It is more expensive, but only slightly, as the machines are bigger, and there are enough of them to garuntee I won't be stuck waiting with a fussy baby, dirty clothes and nowhere to go. Best of all, Betty's has wi-fi, so waiting around for clothes to dry should be a lot more fun!

Now laundry day is Thursdays, the day I meet my mother-in-law in town, though I may go twice this week, to make up for delays. I have so many tapastries to clean before they can start keeping out the cold.

Fall Cleaning

I've done laundry a lot this week, more than my Tuesday: Laundry Day could accomodate. There are so many sheets and blankets that need to be freshened up for the chilly autumn nights. The gardens are almost ready to be put to bed, apart from the root crops, chard, and cabbage. I have hopes, in these coming weeks, of tilling most of the garden under, expanding, and sinking fence-posts, to make the spring-time fence building easier.

Papering the outhouse is coming along nicely, though slowly, and I'm almost out of poems. I've decided to set some candles and a lighter in the outhouse so that trips in the dark will be less spooky. The outhouse looking nice has become a bit of a passion for me. I'm looking forward to seeing it in all it's glory, which still requires a good deal of paint, poems, and shelving. The kitchen is an obvious priority, but it's not really within my skill level, so I focus on the outhouse.

I'm amazed at how quickly the summer went. The leaves are changing, the nights are cold, and the sun sets earlier each evening. I'm thinking of bonfires and apple-picking, pumpkins and roasted vegetables. I wish we could hover right here for another few months.

Laundry day

Because we have no well, and no electricity, and because scrubbing clothes in the stream seems less than ideal in so many ways, we generally launder things at the laundromat. I'd been searching out different laundromats since moving to the land. There is one in Portland with free wireless, but it's a bit more expensive than average. One in Auburn is pretty average, but with overly social staff, who seem always to be expecting something from me. In general I went to one in Paris, with all the basics and nothing disturbing about it, until Matka, on her summer visit discovered the little "barn" laundry down the road. I'm a dedicated washer there, every week, with inexpensive washers, few patrons, and a quiet table to sit with Yarrow reading the King James Bible aloud (there is no one to disturb at "the barn"). We've made it to the tale of Jacob's magic multiplying of sheep and goats. Yarrow enjoys the reading, she likes especially the geneologies, with the rhythm of  names. It is the first time I've really read the geneologies, and Yarrow's interest inspires my own, I like to hear the names roll of my tongue.

"The Barn" has no quarter machines, or soap dispensers, so I have to remember to bring my own, but that is a help as well. It keeps me committed to using our homemade soap for Yarrow's things, and keeping the harsher detergent for our own clothes. When we've finished with the huge jug of detergent we have stored in the outhouse, I'm going to be using homemade detergent for all our things, but until then, I'd still rather keep Yarrow's things safely freash, with a mix of vinegar, borax, baking soda, and castille soap.

Vinegar: the cleaner for every mess

In April, Matka bought me a book on natural household cleaners. The book is full of recipes to clean everything from windows to rugs, and all the recipes I've discovered so far contain vinegar.  I've used vinegar with alum and essential oils to scrub my rug, vinegar with baking soda and borax to soak diapers, vinegar all alone to shine all our windows, and vinegar with salt to scrub copper. If there is a stain or smear or smell that needs gotten rid of, vinegar is now my weapon of choice.

I'm not at all sure what it is about vinegar that cleans so well. We use white vinegar most of the time - and all the time on fabrics - it's inexpensive and easy to store and not dangerous at all, which is a wonderful benefit. I've even used it to clean out a stuffy sort of smell from my old Saturn! I love having a "go-to" cleaner that I can always turn to, knowing that if it doesn't work, at least it won't damage the thing I'm trying to clean, or leave a residue of "cleaner" on my hands.

The plan this week is to put my vinegar to use in the outhouse, deep-cleaning in hopes of finally papering most of the walls either this week or next weekend.