brave Thorn returns for tea and metal

So Thorn did make it home this morning and we had tea and listened to metal most of the day. Well, i didn't have tea ALL day, i washed dishes and fended off attacks from the kitten too. But all is well. We got a bit more rain today. Here are some cute dogs.

Thorn-pants come home

We've gotten good rains the past two days, and its been cool. I still get a bad feeling from this unseasonable moisture, but the garden is happy and the wild flowers are bursting forth. We did laundry today and both got headaches from the obvious propane leak at the laundry mat. After i put away the clothes we took a nap while it was raining. It felt like there was an ice pick stabbing my forehead. I hate icepicks. We also showered this evening and have not eaten supper. I haven't seen Thorn all day, and i am concerned that he was eaten by something. Sad. I hope he comes home soon. We've already lost two cats in the last year to wild hungry things. Nothing will eat Squishy, she's too evil. I desire food and thus must go in search of sustenance.

its kitties, totally brutal

Hail! the Thunderer rides again

desert prim rose gone wild

This is but a small cluster of the wild prim roses that are populating our land. They're on all sides of the garden now like we planted them there on purpose. This is what the unusual rain has made. I can't wait to see how many crop up next year with these guys all going to seed.

kittens and chocolate and mead oh my...

Today already feels busy and its only begun. First i must report on Aspen's integration into our horde of furry family members. He bonded with his half-brother Thorn yesterday and Thorn allowed him to play with his paws and ears, but when Aspen chomped down on his tail, Thorn swiftly sandwiched the kitten between his paws and hissed and stared him down , hissed again and let him go. Aspen then just curled up next to Thorn and passed out. Squishy is currently on a hunger strike, boycotting the house and ignoring us over the existence of a new kitten. Sparki loves Aspen, and i awoke this morning to Sparkles laying in between me and Shevy and Aspen nuzzled up to Sparki. He's so gentle with the kitten its kind of sick. And he's not even six months yet, i figured that he might be too rough with a baby kitty since he's still a baby too, and may not know his own size or strength, but i was totally wrong.

So we have a lot of little things to do today, including running into Ramah to mail a book we just sold on amazon. I hope the bread machine Sheves got me comes in soon, i can't wait to start making fresh bread everyday. Oh Shevy made his first attempt at chocolates with his new recipe from cocoa powder last night. It seems to be hard to get the mixture hot enough at this altitude to get to hard candy bar like stage, but he definitely learned from it. I think they're kind of like caramels consistency right now, but he'll try again . They taste amazing! Organic cocoa powder is the way to go, it almost tastes like coffee. Speaking of homemade stuff, i am still on a quest to find a good cherry mead recipe. Some of our neighbors brought us a huge box of fresh cherries and said make us some mead and beer. So now i have 15lbs. of frozen pitted cherries, but i can't find a good cherry to honey to water ratio. Also I'm kind of nervous about it because my neighbor Dreamy, who has made more mead than i have, has used cherries before and found them to be quite volatile, and i don't want to blow all my bottles and lose all the yummy mead. I may have to make another appeal to the gods for help on this one. Frey has helped me out with two recipes so far, and they were my best batches to date. I want to try something like a cherry ginger mead, and a cherry lime beer. The beer i know how to do, but the mead is the troublesome one.

It is cloudy again and we have another day of high chance of rain. Its nice but just odd and it makes me feel uneasy. I'm worried that the monsoon rains are coming early which might mean we will have a dry July and August, which is bad for the gardens and trees. This is supposed to be the hottest and driest time of year right now and instead it cool and humid (humid being 40 to 50 %). I think my hope and wish for climate change to kill off the no see'ems might be coming true. We'll see though, after June comes and goes.

dude, seriously, Spoken Lore

So what more could a blind dude ask for!? This podcast is awesome and so are the folks who had the idea to do it in the first place. I've been spending a lot of my spare time listening to the sagas, especially when i was sick last week. Also the same folks do another podcast called Ravencast which is quite good too. I like their series that they're doing talking about specific gods.

http://spokenlore.podbean.com

http://ravencast.podbean.com

Aspen's new world

We knew he was coming home, but we didn't know when until now. Aspen is our new baby kitten. He's from the same mama cat as our cat Thorn, who was born last spring, and poor sweet but exceptionally dumb Ursula who was eaten by a large bird of prey in March. Aspen has a similar look to Ursula, but he's gray and white instead of brown and white. Thorn has reacted well so far to his new baby brother, but evil auntie Squishy hasn't seen him yet. I bet she'll warm up to him in her own way. Besides, ever since Ursula went to kitty Valhalla, she hasn't had anything to focus her intense hatred on. Anyway, Aspen is Shevy's cat. I'm still all baby animaled out from being attached to Sparkles at the hip for three months. It was awesome as far as puppy bonding and training goes, but i never got to leave the land except to go over to Whooville since their dog Boo Boo gets along with Sparki. It was fun, but it was like having a kid that keeps wanting to eat your shoes and poop on the floor. Sparki was the most well behaved and clever puppy I've ever known though, and still is. He's almost six months now, and is Hansi's best friend, although he's ripped out all of Hansi's tail fur. Ogi plays with him too, but has really turned into a snotty, crabby 3 year old. Ok, enough gushing about the dogs.

The coming pointless feast of flesh

Once upon a time there was an evil swarm of highly aggressive, microscopic, flying chigger-like insects whose bites burned like blazing, blood boiling grease fires. These flesh hungry beings normally sleep peacefully underground in our magical mountains, but every June they arise to feast on the living for several weeks, until their blood thirst is quenched, or the rainy season begins. The locals call them the "no see 'ems" however for me this describes most bugs, so to me they are "the bane of my existence!" or "the bitey bugs." I have heard that they're part of the mosquito family, but i would gladly ask mosquitoes in for tea and lovely conversation, and find them to be quite pleasant before even remotely considering tolerating the existence of the bitey bugs. If Billy were here, this is where he would start telling me how they're actually very intelligent creatures and an integral part of our local ecosystem. I don't care, i hope climate change hastens their demise. As our neighbor Sunshine says, "If there was only a button to make all no see 'ems go extinct instantly" he would not hesitate for a moment before mashing it with all of his might. And i would gladly do the same. Oh, and did i mention that they are repelled by nothing, and unlike chiggers, who are content to only bite along your sock and underwear lines, these wretched bitey bugs will bite anywhere. We're talking legs, arms, torso, eyelids, the inner parts of the outer ear, underarms, genitals, no parts are sacred, and mere clothing will not shield you from their wrath. There are a few local ladies who make homemade herbal ointments that supposedly repel them, but i have tried them and one seems to ease the flaming itch pretty well, but nothing stops their need to chew. I have also hear that taking tons of B vitamins with beep their teeth at bay, so i am trying this now, and will report back later after their reign of carnage has waned. So now there is nothing to do but count the days of relative peace while the dark cloud slowly begins its assent over our beloved wooded mountains. Soon we and the dogs will be huddled inside around our swamp cooler waiting for the danger to pass and the great rains to come once more.

Sunburst; Sunset

So the day started off peacful enough. Last night we had a bit of a hail storm, but only one kale plant was damaged badly. We spent the morning visiting our nearest neighbors, Dean and Mike, and Shevy aquired an old double boiler for making chocolate candies for farmers market this summer. We needed something new to sell, besides Shevy's jewelry, that's low cost and eatible and the market for most other baked goods is already cornered by others. We just ordered some chocolate molds in various shapes including, but not limited to, vegetables, farm animals, unicorns, and dragons. I'm just thrilled that we'll have soy free chocolate that i can have since all things soy are now my nemisis.

Anyway, last fall Mike had made a nice carved wooden sign for our road. Since our little Sunburst lane is only inhabited by 3 families, it has no sign, until now. We scrounged up a post and installed it on our corner this afternoon. We're going to get more rocks to go around it as well as a carved dwarf holding an axe that Mike also made last year. After that i hippie bleached out our water tanks and we went to fetch water ahead of a looming storm that ended up blowing over with no rain. When the water was put away, i strolled down the hill to chickenland to check eggs as i do most every day. To my shock and confusion, i saw a chicken blob that was not the shape it should have been for a sleeping or nesting chicken. No, actually if i were not blind i would've seen one of our Delawares hanging by the waddle, dead in front of the nesting boxes. This was later confirmed by Shevs. We suspect, after checking her all out, that she must have had that thing where their egg gets stuck somehow and kills them. I don't remember what its called, but it has a name. We took her out into the woods behind our property and lightly burried her, knowing the cayoties won't waste much time in finding her. We offered her up for whoever took her in this way. I think the most brutal part is that it seems like one of the other hens must have shoved her dead body out of the nest box because when i found her, both of the nest boxes were occupied. So they were sitting there watching their dead friend hanging off of a branch nub on the roost all day, since i haden't checked it since last evening. I thik chickens are much closer to dinosaurs than we think. So, we decided today to save some eggs to hatch some new baby chicks, since now only two of our hens are young ones. Five of our now nine are six years plus. We'll need to add an expansion onto chickenland for the new babies, but it shouldn't be hard.

The sun has now set for the life of one lone chicken, and literally in the land of Wyrmwood, our home. The darkening sky is still splotched with gray and white, and the evening chill brings the hope for a bit more rain before the hot, dry, bug infested hell of June decendes upon us.

to start off

All of this season's planting is almost done and we have had some lovely rain for the past several days. The moisture this time of year is pretty strange, but i'm not complaining and neither are all of the new sprouts in the garden. Its still cool and cloudy today and i've been feeling crappy as in I've had some kind of flu-like bug that is just now starting to die off. All of the fruit trees we planted this spring are doing well though, and the dogs seem extra playful today. They all got worm removal liquid and new raw hide bones this morning. Shevy is planting more stuff today, a forest of giant black dye sunflowers, morning glories, a ton of calendula and some buttercup winter squash. We're already able to harvest some spinach and baby kale.
Important lesson :
Don't name your chickens after ancient warlords, it makes them cranky and mean. Gangis looks like hell and Attila the Hen never shuts up and is always starting shit. They're both still laying well though.

Thor and a dream i had

I originally wrote this back in April and had it posted to my paganspace blog, but its easier to keep track of one blog so i stuck it here.

I have been drawn to Thor and the northern tradition in general, in many small ways all through my life, but until about six months ago i had not yet embraced my spiritual path. Since last Oct. my partner and i have been intensely studying the norse gods and the lore and anything else related that we can get our hands on. From the start of our recent knowledge consumption, i knew Thor was my patron and i do all i can to honor him in the things i say and the way i live. Well, i try to honor all the gods really, but Thor feels special to me and i can't really explain the feeling. When i meditate sometimes and when i am thinking of him i am filled with warmth and a feeling of great peace and jolliness, like playing music and drinking beer with my brothers and close friends that i haven't seen in a long time. To me, Thor seems to have the energy of an awesome older brother who's looking out for me, and all that i love and care for and protect.

So a few weeks ago, just before my birthday i had this dream that has very clearly stuck with me since. I should start by saying the afternoon before the night i had this dream my hands and arms kept feeling numb and tingly, like they were falling asleep, but i wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary, and the feeling wouldn't go away no matter what i did to try to stop it. The first part of the dream wasn't that exciting, i was wandering through the streets of my home town with my 3 month old puppy sparki following me (like he does in my waking life right now). I don't remember heading for anywhere in particular or looking for anything or anyone. I came upon my old high school and briefly walked through the halls. I didn't recognize anyone there, and it looked different than my memories of it, as if i was seeing it now in 2009 instead of 1998 when i was last there. I went through a side door and out to a covered sidewalk that lead to the band and choir halls where i spent a lot of time in the past. After only walking a little ways down this sidewalk i noticed the wind was cold and the sky was dark with the energy of a coming storm. A voice from a figure that i didn't see further down the sidewalk was calling out for everyone to get indoors because of a tornado warning. I paused at hearing this and started to consider going back inside, but then a flash of white, i saw the bolt come from the sky and it was heading horizontally towards me and i stood still because i knew it was meant to hit me. It struck my chest andcame out through my right arm and the palm of my hand. It knocked me to the ground, but i was unhurt except for some blackness on my hand where it left me. I looked around me as i was now on the ground and somehow there were wooden runes scattered around me as if i had been carrying them and dropped them when the lightning struck. I didn't notice any specific ones, but i started picking them up. (I'm nearly blind in waking life and also in my dreams, so that's why i didn't see which ones had scattered at a glance) I don't carry runes around with me and i am only just starting to learn about them. In the last part of the dream, i was getting up from the ground and looking to see if my puppy was alright and he was fine. I woke up then and was so overwhelmed with different feelings that i woke up my partner and told him about it. I then noticed that the tingly feeling in my hands and arms was gone and it was still there when i had fallen asleep. He informed me that people say right before they get struck by lightning or if it strikes really near by, they report feeling tingly.
I'm still pondering over the exact meaning of the dream. My partner thinks i was marked by Thor in some way. I can't really argue with that. Since the dream i have overall been more energetic and i feel intensely driven to do the thing i set out to do, such as working on new projects on our land, my gardens, and my spiritual path. I've been thinking a lot on Thor and all that he stands for and in the past week or so i have been focusing on sacrifice and thinking on Freyr as well. I still am not sure what the runes in he dream stand for. It still seems odd that they scattered when i fell, but they are important somehow, it just hasn't been revealed to me yet. I feel that my confidence and faith in the gods is stronger now, as well as my connection to Thor.