“What do you do with all of your spare time?”
Thankfully, both what I love to do on a daily basis and what
it takes to survive off grid intersect often, running at a close parallel most
of the time. Last night, I was up late watching Downton Abbey, Season 4, Disc
1, which just arrived from Netlflix. So, this morning, I lounged in bed until
the sun was high overhead around 10am. I only have to tilt my head back on the
pillow to look outside the window at the blue sky scattered with cottony
clouds, a slight chill in the air fogging the windows on the inside, just
around the corners.
Gregg has been up for a couple of hours reading trapping
magazines and working Sudoku puzzles, so the coffee’s warm and sits atop the
heating stove. We’ve had a hard freeze the past couple of nights and a heavy
frost coats the grass and shrubs across the still river, so still that it makes
me stare an extra few seconds, making sure there is still an occasional ripple.
There, it’s still flowing.
I drink a couple of cups of coffee, laced generously with
coconut milk, and settle in with my latest read. Sometimes, I have a “Mother
Earth News” or “Cook’s Country” magazine that I’m working my way through.
However, this morning, I’m in the middle of a self-published novel by Roman
Acleaf, The Tundra Diary: A Didactic Alaskan Novel, about a teacher’s
first year teaching in a rural Alaskan Arctic village. I can relate and it is a
good reminder of things I’ve seen and done, but not written about yet – I need
to get those experiences down on paper. Meanwhile, Johnny Cash is crooning on
the local radio station, KNSA, “Feeling unknown and your all alone, flesh and
bone, by the telephone… I was a giver. You know I’m a forgiver. Reach out and
touch me.” I allow myself an hour, sometimes more, depending on the weather, in
this indulgent behavior. The day awaits.
After we decide on a light breakfast consisting of thick
slices of Apple Butter Bread, Gregg heads out to burn boxes down by the river
and I turn my attention to the greasy stovetop and counters in the kitchen.
Once they are acceptable, it’s time to move the dog beds outside to the porch
for the day, where they can relax in the cool sunshine and chew on moose bones.
I head down the 25 or so steps to the greenhouse, which sits on six foot poles
above the low, grassy area just a few feet above the river’s edge. It feels
like descending from a treehouse, stepping on the yellow leaf covered planks
and looking through the bare branches hanging at eye level. There is a handrail
only on the house-side of the steps so that large objects can be easily hauled
up and down, to and from the cabin, like the new kitchen stove and its box that
Gregg is just now adding to the burn pile.
It is 40 degrees in the greenhouse and the inside most
likely didn’t feel the effects of last night’s freeze. However, the plants have
stopped growing for the year, the few vegetables having remained the same size
for a couple of weeks, now. It’s time to harvest. Carrots are the crop of the
day. I planted about four dozen of them in various containers. The largest, 3-4
inches long, came out of the clear plastic, Black Velvet bottles that I had cut
the tops off of. I planted three to a bottle and they did fairly well, but some
were stunted about an inch from the surface soil and then split into several
carrot fingers reaching further down into the container. I’ll have to study up
on that before next spring and try again. The ones that I planted in 3-gallon
planters never got bigger around than the last digit on my pinkie finger. Oh,
well, after trimmed and cleaned, the summer’s yield will be one good side dish
for the two of us tonight, alongside Halibut filets that I caught a few weeks
ago, and some potatoes left over from the River Lodge’s end-of-season cleanup.
As set the container of semi-clean carrots to soak on the
kitchen counter in a Glad plastic tub filled with river water, I grab the
couple of plastic containers (empty whiskey jug and battery package) that can
be reused later, two ginger ale cans for the recycling box, and the 1 ½ pound
Folgers can which serves as our kitchen compost bucket, and head downstairs. With
everything in its place and a good stir of the compost tub outside, it’s time
to head to the garden to harvest the beets. I’m not expecting much because the
stalks and leaves are only about 6-inches tall. My expectations are met with
roots the size of a pen refill tube and no bulbs at all. Compost material, at
best.
I picked the last of the peas and beans a couple of days ago
and added them to a Thai Curry that I had made for dinner. Our biggest green
tomato is smaller than a ping pong ball, cuke is small, prickly, and wonting,
the Walla Walla onions not much more than the chives, peppers are non-existent,
cabbages gave us leaves but no heads, and on and on. I know I shouldn’t be
disappointed because I knew we got a late start this year and it was a long
shot to even plant, but the summer was so exciting, watching the plants grow
and nourishing them with river water, organic fertilizer, and hand-crushed egg
shells.
After feeding the beets to the compost tub near the garden,
I head back down the steps with some empty food and wine boxes from the trash
for Gregg to add to the fire. I decide to start a box of burnable waste to
reduce our trash that needs to go to town this winter. Sitting on the bottom
set of steps, just outside of the greenhouse, I watch the boxes turn to ashes
while Gregg throws a stick for Nuka, her favorite game. He tells me he heard a
moose crashing around in the brush across the river. We get quiet and listen
and he rustles some nearby branches with the stick he had been throwing for Nuka,
making a sound similar to a moose scraping his antlers. Silence. I notice there
are a couple of shriveled, seed-filled, Marigold pods in the flower box on the
greenhouse landing, pinch them off, and search their purple-flower-neighbors (I
don’t know what their called), but their seed pods are still green. I hold the precious Marigold seeds tight in
my hand as I ascend back up two levels to the cabin porch and collect any seeds
ready from those flower boxes, as well. More Marigolds and some yellow daisies.
I smile and take them inside where I’ll leave them to dry out on a paper towel
for the day before squirreling them away in my homemade seed envelopes for
safe-keeping until spring.
By noon, my hands are cold from washing the carrots outside
in 33 degree water from the river. Time for another cup of coffee and spend a
couple of hours writing while Gregg empties the mouse traps downstairs that he
baits with dog food (he keeps the mice for trapline bait), takes a walk over to
check on the River Lodge, boarded up for winter, comes back to report one
grouse and his regret at not having taken his .22 with him, and settles in at
the kitchen table for another round of Sudoku.
Today is quieter than most. We enjoyed having a lifelong
friend of his here for a visit for the past 12 days, but he left on yesterday’s
afternoon flight, bound for his home in Minnesota. The quietness of just the
two of us is comfortable and welcome.
It’s already two in the afternoon. Where did the morning go?
This afternoon, after we enjoy a late lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches and
Salt & Vinegar Lay’s, I’ll probably do some quilting before making our
Halibut/Carrot/Potato dinner, after which, we’ll turn on the generator to use
the internet, listen to Sirius Radio,
and maybe even watch a movie, most probably a western of some sort. Internet
time is when I do most of my “work,” marketing my three online businesses,
Younique (makeup), Perfectly Posh (bath & body products), and PawTree (pet
supplies). That’s also when I research online teaching opportunities and send
off magazine submissions. Tonight, I’ll probably also put together a baking
plan for what I need to make Thursday and Friday for this Saturday’s Market in
town.
What was I writing about? Oh yeah, what I do with all of my
spare time!
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😁❤️
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