An Existential Question

What do you do? 
I was asked this question twice this month and came up short on my answer both times.  The first was at a retirement party for a friend in Seattle.  Another Metroid (as we liked to call ourselves) in asking where I lived these days and trying to imagine me in the woods near Rosario Resort since this was his only experience with the San Juans was answered only with "Oh, I manage to keep busy".  And last week at an equinox bonfire, the same question was put to me by the daughter of a friend.  "I'm retired" is all I could manage to say.  She turned away.

As you can see from my blogs these last few years, I feel my life is full and meaningful.  Why is it I can only come up with lame replies such as "Anything I want to do" and "Everyday is Saturday"?  In part, I suppose it is hard to label such a life.  I volunteer, or I garden, or I weave baskets are all inadequate by themselves.  And I don't want to blab on and on when the casual question does not require it.

Gentle Readers, if any of you have experienced a similar self-identification situation, perhaps you could help me with a solution.  Meanwhile, here are a few of the things I have been in March:

Grandmother

Roger and I became grandparents once again early in the morning on March 13th when Corbin Olafr Ellison arrived in the world.  Met with the news of his arrival two weeks ahead of schedule, we raced to get our car out of bondage at the repair shop, make the 10:30 boat and pick up the grandtwins and return to the island with them.  We had a fun filled two days and then I brought them home to meet their new little brother.  Meanwhile their two year old sister Audrey went home with another grandma.

Lenora & Iliana meet Corbin



Nature Lover

March has been interesting weather-wise to say the least.  We've had snow and wind and rain and yesterday, a gorgeous gardening day.  The daffodils are blooming but we are cognizant of the possibility of another frost or two before the season is over.  Roger and I have been chipping up a year's worth of prunings and limbings and fellings.  But yesterday we switched gears and chose between building better fences in the chicken yard and the courtyard and harvesting willow for that project and the "crow's nest" (see last month), and weeding the raspberry patch and a bunch of other tasks equally important. 

early March snowfall

Committee Member
Last week alone and in part due to grandmothering from the week before, I squeezed in a nominating committee meeting and regular lunch meeing of SIFri, two membership meetings, a board meeting, and a monthly gathering of the Textile Guild,  plus my bi-weekly shift at the Food Coop.  Oh, and I took a day off for a yoga retreat as well. 

Social Butterfly
This month (so far) I've been to two birthday, one going away, one retirement (in Seattle) parties, an equinox celebration,  two neighborhood gatherings for games, a fund-raising dinner, and a play.  Still have a week to go.  When do I have time for anything else?

Creating Collages on Peggy Sue's birthday

Blogger
Next month I will show you the pictures from a three day workshop on Shaw for Tahitian Market Baskets that I will be attending this week.

Bluebirds and Books

Today I spent five hours hauling fir branches and digging out thistles with my hori-hori.  But this time the work was not on my own property.  I was with a bunch of Soroptimists doing community service for the Land Bank on Cady Mountain.  The project is a restoration of Garry Oaks which is where the bluebirds come in.  I must admit, part of the reason I signed up for this activity was that I had never been up Cady Mountain before and I was curious.  So I was delighted to see all the wildflowers in bloom:  avalance lily, fritallarias, camas, shooting star all over the place.  And a fabulous view across San Juan Valley to the Salish Sea.

Another plus was a guest lecturer who came to describe the ongoing bluebird project here on the island.  A few hundred feet away from our worksite sat an aviary with a nesting pair of bluebirds due to be released tonight.  It turns out that bluebirds LOVE Garry Oaks.  But as many of you know, the oak population has been overshadowed (literally) by Douglas Fir.  Bluebirds like wide open spaces and hollow trees to nest in.  They like places that are burned frequently.  That used to be the situation here before white men came and the Indians stopped burning the camas fields.  But even as late as 1960's, bluebirds were much more prevalent on the island.  So--restore the Garry Oak, restore the bluebird as well.blue bird project

Speaking of fires, and especially, wilderness fires, I read a great book a while ago by Timothy Egan called The Big Burn.  It is about a huge forest fire in 1910 that burned Northern Idaho and parts of Washington and Montana.  But it is also about Teddy Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, and the beginnings of the National Forest Service.  It could be considered the beginning of conservancy movement here in the United States.  I recommend it.

Another good book I am reading currently is Winter Brothers A Season at the Edge of America by Ivan Doig.  It was written 30 years ago about a pioneer by the name of James Gilchrist Swan who settle with the Makaw Indians for a few years in the 1850's and later moved to Port Townsend.  But it is so much more than that.  It is history/anthropology/philosopy all rolled into one.  People familiar with the area around Cape Flattery and Lake Ozette will be fascinated.

And coincidentally, the book I read just prior to the Doig book was a memoir written by a friend and neighbor who starts his story off with a misadventure canoeing down the Ozette River.  This would have been in the early 70's just about the time my brothers and I rafted down the Ozette.  I'm feeling all wrapped up in this Pacific Northwest History, from Missoula to Neah Bay.  My friend Jim Lawrence's book is called Callous Hands, Hungry Heart.  He was raised on Mercer Island and came to San Juan Island as a back to the lander.  But he had so many adventures and problems to overcome, I'd use up all the space in this blog just listing them. 

The last book I'd like to review here was set in Upper Wisconsin, not the Northwest.  It is the The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: a novel by David Wroblewski.  It is a fabulous retelling of Hamlet, only the hero is a 14 year old mute dog trainer and Ophelia is his companion dog Almandine.  Oh, it makes me weepy, just thinking of poor Almandine. video discussing Almandine  This was a very good read.

So now you know what I've been doing this wet, cold April, although much of this reading was done in late March on planes coming and going from Hawaii.  It is just me and my companion dog, Suzie, here at Thornbush for the next few days as Roger is at a "Food Forest Workshop" at  Wild Thyme Farm near Olympia.  Tomorrow is MayDay and I plan on celebrating at the bonfire/potluck of friends down the road aways.  I made a pie using the first of this season's rhubarb yesterday.  Goodbye to April, the cruelest month and on to the merry month of May!

Thornbush in Winter



It's busy.  No lie.  Whoever said this was the slow time of year had no idea.  It's not just sitting around watching American Idol and Glee on tv in the evening.  First there's the regular, the mundane that still must go on:  finding firewood and building fires, feeding the chickens, grooming the dog.  Add to that the on-going projects:  working on the carport (forever), building a new gate for the nut grove, and getting ready for another year in the garden.

Greenhouse veggie starts

bamboo and willow gate



where gate will go (after deer trashed the last one)



There are the regular meetings at the Ag Resource Committee for Roger, yoga for me, plus the burgeoning community and volunteer involvement:  helping to move the co-op into the larger building, rejoining the Grange (I'm now the "Grace" Pomona), Winter Farmers Market, Soroptimist Fundraisers, and on and on.  Now that I'm the SJ Island rep for the Textile Guild I have board meetings on the ferry, monthly meetings at the library, and quarterly meetings on the different islands-last month on Shaw- to attend.



Then there are the classes. Right now, Roger is attending a two day class called Holistic Management for Farming. holistic management link Last weekend I took a two day willow class from Katherine Lewis of Dunbar Gardens of Skagit County.Dunbar Garden Website  My friend Monique from Seattle joined us and did a great job with her very first basket. 



That's Monique in front row on the far right



And I attended an amazing class on double weave in January from an expert from Santa Fe, Jennifer Moore.  Here is her website: http://www.doubleweaver.com/workshops.html  This class involved going to Shaw to borrow a loom, going to Orcas to warp the loom, then three days of ferry riding to attend the class on Orcas, then returning the loom to Shaw.

And then there is the ever present looking for signs that winter will end soon and Spring will begin.  It is 34 degrees outside and sunny.  A walk around the place finds that the daffodils are about six inches high, the hellebores and heather are blooming, the Indian Plum is leafing out, and I am "forcing" two vases of red flowering currants to bloom in the house.  Four more weeks until the Spring Equinox.