A couple of videos that I thought were lovely

that a friend passed on this morning.

Where the Hell is Matt (and maybe everyone has already seen these, I know how far behind the pop culture curve I am!) and a video from Playing for Change

I'm still trying to upload some recent photos of our blizzard on Thursday (it was pretty minor as blizzards, go, but it sounds exciting). Can't figure out the danged photo software on my laptop.

Harry found this Storm Trooper Dance video while we were watching the others, and wanted me to post it too!

Spring! Ahhhhhhhhh.....

Haven't written much, feel like I'm perpetually holding my breath, wondering what might collapse and when in this breathtaking world economy we're living through right now.

But in real life, all has been well. February was weirdly warm, we got some planting done and the little sprouts are doing well. We're helping out Home Grown Food with publicity and running workshops and Steve's been creating fun buttons for them to sell.

Our chickens are doing fine, though our boss girl is molting and she looks a bit odd without a big beautiful bouquet of tail feathers. The three pullets are in the garage now, we put them out in the big coop on warm days and lock them in there. They will have a bit of a time integrating into the flock when they're full-sized, but I hope the hen-pecking won't be too severe.

We missed Nick's birthday party because pertussis was running through his crowd of friends, but short of holing up all winter, there's no escaping the bugs. We went to a really fun, huge, hands-on physics fair at the university the following weekend, and shortly thereafter came down with a lovely coughing crud that we're still expectorating.

Harry is still going to croup, but glory of glories, we went in to urgent care and found that they've created a new liquid steroid formulation that doesn't taste like poison anymore! He was able to slug it down and we didn't have to do the middle of the night drives with the window down for hours on end. I can't tell you what a relief that was!

My folks arrived for a wonderful visit which ends tomorrow, we even got a dash of snow while they were here. They've split their time between our house and Cindi's. On Saturday, Dad came up with Nick and Owen and we met downtown for the St. Patrick's Day parade, which was hokey but fun.

Steve's still got a job (hooray!) and he even negotiated a raise, because he's been so damned efficient that he's reduced his hours by 20 percent. So they're paying him 10 percent more and he's going to make up the other 10 percent of lost time by generating new moneymaking ventures for the magazine, calendars, t-shirts, etc. to sell.

I went out for a mother's brunch out yesterday with a group of six or seven women, all of us unschoolers, down in Boulder, and I was shocked at the degree and rapidity with which the economy has affected them. Two husbands are laid off, two women are going back to work part-time, two are considering how they might manage through a divorce because the financial stresses are creating such strain. It made me realize how fragile people are going to be throughout this crisis and how valuable an extra dose of gentleness for people I meet will be.

I'm excited to get planting and growing. I've been reading up on various intensive gardening methods. I'm going to plant out some potatoes in a protected bed today, but I really want to plant more using this method.

We're going to experiment with some grains. I have amaranth seeds to plant, but eventually i think it would be fun to grow oats and wheat.

My new friend who is hosting a community garden on her land wants to raise piglets and has asked if we want to participate and buy/help raise a piglet. I would like to, though I'm wondering how I'll handle butchering time, when it comes around. (We won't be doing the job ourselves, mind you, but I imagine it will be emotional nonetheless.) I figure either I'll make my peace with it or be motivated to go vegetarian.

I'm still waffling on the dairy goat partnership. I just don't see getting up crack-of-dawn to go over to Rosemary's farm and milk most mornings. Housing here would be problematic. We still haven't figured out how to pen the chickens up to keep them out of our gardens but still able to roam and graze. They're nibbling away on the green grass shoots coming up, and they get very antsy if we lock them in their coop for too long during the day. (Oh, we moved our compost pile from one side of the yard to the other on Friday and the whole thing was loaded with worms. The chickens were positively apoplectic, running back and forth along the fencing we'd put up temporarily so they'd stay out of our way, as Steve carted the smelly goo across the yard. Once we released them ("Release the chickens!" she bellowed, and all the worms quaked, but you couldn't really tell because they were pretty gelatinous to begin with."), they raced over to the new compost pile and walked around the sides of it, heads cocked sideways, beaks darting between the wooden slats to grab whatever critters were unlucky enough to have landed at the outer edges of the pile.

Morning and it's duties calls, so I'll sign off for now!

ps. Maddie just finished a blog post as well, if you haven't found her blog, it's here

Changing my mind

In more ways than one. I had written a post about today's market convulsions, as I've been glued to the Internet this morning, reading fascinating and frightening commentary about what's happening. But I notice that each time I do that, I ruin my enjoyment of the day and skew my perspective on life in detrimental ways, so I think instead, I will let the world's economies do what they're going to do, and head out to a community garden planning/seed ordering meeting with the kids. It is, after all, a glorious day here, and in many other places in the world. And gardening is the best antidote for economic crises, both in spirit and in pratical returns! So I'm changing my mind -- all *is* well, sun is shining, children and chickens are happy, and I feel much better realizing all that!

Does the Dog Whisperer pick up his dogs' poop?

It's one of those questions that nags at me each time I catch Sunny giving me the eye as I stoop and grab her poop in my bag covered hand. What is she thinking? Am I undermining my status as pack leader by picking up her poop? WWtDWD?

I brought this up with Steve the other morning, as we were walking in circles on the schoolyard, getting a little exercise before our kids were up and before the school kids were heading to school.

I said I was pretty sure Cesar didn't pick up after his dog pack, didn't seem like a pack leader-ly thing to do, but then I remembered that dogs are coprophagic and decided that maybe he could pretend to eat the poop and still retain status. And then Steve really grossed me out by saying that he's such an authentic pack leader that maybe he actually does eat... eewwwww, nevermind.

We're doing fine. It's been a mild, dry winter and I'm giving in to the gardening urges and planting spinach in a cold frame. We've got greens started in a windowsill and will finish erecting a hoop cover over our new long raised bed this week, to let the soil heat up and speed the composting process so that we can plant out in another few weeks.

The kids and I have been immersing in all sorts of survival skills reading -- from My Side of the Mountain (one of my very favorite books growing up), to Bear Gryll's new book, Man vs. Wild, based on his TV series, to the first two seasons of Survivorman on DVD (thanks Grandma and PopPop!)

We're inspired to learn some fire starting and knot tying skills at the very least, and Maddie would like to construct a small building in the backyard, so she and I may build a larger coop for our growing flock, though she is also drafting ambitious plans for a two-story home.

We're trying to get more organized about our garden records and the kids and I are going to track how many eggs we're producing and perhaps even weigh our garden produce as we harvest it, if I can find a little kitchen scale at a reasonable price.

We're also going to participate in a co-gardening venture at the mini-ranch of a friend of a friend who lives a couple of miles away. She has chickens goats and horses and is going to plow a bunch of aged manure into an acre or so of unused paddock, which we and a few other families will plant and tend over the summer months. The kids will enjoy going over there, for all the animals and the wonderful barn full of rope swings. Even though we'll have a lot growing in our own yard, I'm thinking I'll learn a lot from gardening with others and may end up growing things I didn't know I liked. Plus, we'll have all the more surplus to share with neighbors and there's always dehydrating, canning and freezing that can be done.

Steve's working a lot these past couple of weeks and both he and the couple who publish Nexxus are breathing sighs of relief that not only are ads coming in, they're actually reversing the decline of the last couple of years! There are four more pages of ads this issue than last, and last issue had more ads than the previous. At least for now, Nexxus is in good shape and people are willing to spend on advertising to keep their businesses going.

That's most of the news that's fit to print (okay, maybe the Cesar Milan stuff was a bit libelous, but I doubt he reads my blog....)

Continuing the California in decline theme...

This is the piece Steve did for the LA Times book review this weekend. Don't think the link will take you to the right place after a week, however...

edited to change the link to this, which is just a thumbnail of the piece. Fame is even more fleeting in cyberspace than in print, sadly!

Color photos from 1939-1944

Found a reference to this huge Flickr collection today (imagine, the Library of Congress is now on Flickr!) I find it utterly fascinating to see color photos from this era. I love the carny/fair shots and I found the sharecropper photos particularly poignant.

Today's high? 21 degrees.... Celsius!

How balmy to hit 70 in January! I'm starting to warm up to this whole climate change thing....

Yesterday was nearly as gorgeous, we watched the inauguration then took off for the raptor rehabilitation center for a hike along the poudre river and a visit to some disabled birds of prey, including a huge bald eagle, golden eagle and great horned owl. In the afternoon, I bought 27 bags of steer manure for some garden bed building today. Of course, whatever I want to get done, I need to finish it by tomorrow, as the weather is expected to turn tomorrow night.

Steve and I have had a prosperous week, which is nice for a change. Steve last did two pieces of freelance art for the LA Times over Thanksgiving, and with exquisitely bad timing, he submitted his invoices in that narrow window just before the company declared bankruptcy. His unpaid invoice is now part of the bankruptcy proceedings and who knows when or if we'll ever see the full amount.

A week after the filing, the company was okayed to continue payments for future work and Steve got two assignments last week, which he just finished. Whilst I got my first writing assignment in 4 1/2 years from the LA Daily News, where my good friend and former colleague is now the editorial page editor. She was putting together a package on this current out-migration from California, and wanted a first-person piece. I thoroughly enjoyed writing it for her and you can read it here. Doesn't pay much, $150, and that is if I can get payment before something drastic happens at the Daily News, a distinct possibility these days. Still and all, a fun return to writing, and I may do more in the future.