Alaska!

Thought I'd share some of the gorgeous scenery up here in the far north country.








And, yes, I am freezing cold most of the time!
Baby pics next time...

Grandbaby #3 is here!

Acacia Rose is utterly sweet & gorgeous, mostly very calm & serene considering what she just went through. I loved watching Lori & Dave together - he was right there with her the whole time. We took turns pushing on her back or coaching her, trading off every so often. Lori was amazing - she did great even with that long hard labor. Everyone's still kinda shaky & overtired, and Lori is completely exhausted. Both Acacia & Lori are getting the hang of nursing.

Born: October 22
8 pounds 9 oz
20-1/2 inches long!
With long dark hair & long slender fingers - she's beautiful!

Now, we're all hoping they can all return home this evening and begin settling in together.

Still Waiting...

I had a lovely, if all too short, time in Seattle with my youngest. Perfect Fall weather and all the beautiful Autumn colors the entire time I was there! We walked & walked, and it felt so good to really stretch out after the long airplane ride (5-1/2 hours from Honolulu). Kerry was in the midst of packing in preparation for her move to a new apartment, which I'll get to see on my return trip, but we didn't spend much time indoors anyway. We had a blast poking into little shops here & there, traipsing through wooded parks, visiting the library and Pike Street Market. Had dinner at The Owl & Thistle Irish pub. And then I was whisked away to the airport the next morning.


Now I'm up in Alaska, with Lori & Dave. We're all still waiting for baby to arrive... she's sure taking her sweet time and so far, that's okay. We've done some sight-seeing, taken lots of walks, found the rest of the needed nursery items, watched movies, laundered & assembled those nursery items... and still no baby.
We've gone on more walks, trimmed Shadow's claws, finished a huge jigsaw puzzle, and toured the land... and still no baby.

Gone shopping, taught Smokey to pull out saplings, eaten lots of wonderful foods, played with the kitty-cat, and done even more walking... and still no baby!

But we have had some wonderful visiting time while we're all waiting patiently for the little one. The days are short but not too bad yet. It's darn cold outside - frost every morning and today it lasted all day in the shady spots. But lovely toasty warm inside at home.
It's fun to see chickadees again, my favorite little bird. And there are huge magpies too. Since the house is surrounded by a birch-spruce forest, these feathered friends come up pretty close and we enjoy bird-watching from the warmth of the indoors.
No one stays pregnant forever. It won't be long now!

Quickie Update Before I Leave...

I'm taking off tomorrow to see our daughters, one in Seattle and one in Alaska, and I'm very excited to meet grandbaby #3 as soon as she's born!

It's been busy, busy around here, though there's been plenty of plain old 'wait & see' as well.


We have 6 new laying hens to replace those who were lost last summer. The new girls are all Auracanas, the ones who lay the blue-green eggs. That brings our flock up to 21. There is now a driveway alarm to alert us of any other activity back there. (The baby monitors we'd tried earlier were less than satisfactory.) A couple days ago, Mike cleared out more of the tall ferns between the back fence and the chicken yard so we now have a clear view of the flock from our house. A perimeter fence around both lots is planned, and clearing has started for that, but got stalled for some reason... not quite sure why.


The piggery is still waiting for the line-up of the planets or whatever it takes to get all the approvals in order. There it sits, all cleared and graveled and waiting... It's utterly ridiculous and would be almost funny except that we could be raising food already. This'll teach us to go by the rules, huh? Frustrating is what it is. The building permit did get approved, finally... now it's the NRCS that's holding us up. They want to do a site survey to check for - get this - burial mounds, petroglyphs, and the like... under our 13x30-foot shed. If they do manage to find something of the sort though, forget pigs, we'll run a tourist attraction! Ha!


On to happier things. The new garden area is growing really well. We have two beds of taro/kalo; lots of sweet potatoes, both white & purple; starfruit, longan, and mamay sapote tree seedlings; a tamarillo, a few papaya, mugwort, purslane, tomatoes, kabocha squashes, basil, & pineapples scattered throughout.

Mike's been producing biochar from dried coconut husks. He has a little firepit in the new garden area and has got the art down pretty well now. He adds this to the IMO mixture along with chicken manure & dolomite. This combo ferments and does its thing for a week, then we use the resultant super fertilizer for top-dressing the plants or dig it into the soil for new plantings. It's fantastic stuff and we're starting to see good results - all this from creating our own fertilizer!


The experimental corn patch behind Mike's workshop has been producing lovely sweet corn for a week now. So fun to have a familiar crop, and it tastes wonderful. But the most amazing thing is that it's growing on 2-3" of soil atop a slab of solid pahoehoe lava!! Now you understand a little better why we're so excited about all this IMO stuff. ;-)


I absolutely love my new workroom! We spent a few days during a lull between guests to reconfigure the hale and increase the living space on our side by adding a door between the Sunrise Room and our bedroom. Then we put up a wall to divide the hallway, thus creating a linen closet on our side and a beautiful map wall on the hale side. As a bonus, we also gained a second bathroom. It all went so smoothly and makes me feel like I can really settle in at last, now that I can have indoor projects going, space for my sewing & craft stuff, and room to pack my suitcase in preparation for my trip!(This baby quilt was the first project in my new workroom ~ for Lori & Dave's little bambina, arriving very soon!)