windthread

on the way home from the Farmer's Market yesterday….only one more Saturday this year….i stopped at the Thrift Shop that is in the same little link of businesses as my Lakeside Market.  Just around the corner and down a short way to this Hill.   I've gone in a few other times since i've been here.   Got one really great twin fitted all cotton sheet.  I forget what else.  She's probably my age.  The place is crammed with stuff.  Some of it is of real value but a lot is like someone's garage sale.  There's an end room for clothing,  household cloth stuff and the lighting is non existent so i have no idea really what is in there.  I go along running my hand to feel for cotton.    Shopping blind.  99% is synthetic.  I really lucked out with that sheet.  I should take a pic.  It's pretty.

she remembered me and said she'd wondered where i'd been.  I said i hadn't needed anything,  but today was wanting a Pot.  Didn't  matter if it was dinged up,  dented,  but big.  Preferably aluminun.  She thought …no,  she didn't think so,  but then said maybe and we dug out stuff  from in front of a large table piled with other stuff and there,  under the table was a box.  And this 4.3 L  aluminum pot.  With a lid, even.  Not it's orignal lid,  but one that fits.  so…YAY  There was Happiness.

some of the walnuts are in it.  I'll set them to simmer in the morning when there is a chill.   Not now…still warm from the day.  And there's WIND…real WIND,  not a breeze,  but WIND.  I have feelings.

in the Other Life,  i would set the pot on the wood stove.

don't know if this pic comes through to make any sense,  but….the metal yard stick is there to give some sense of size.  This is the bottom of a pine that fell.  Part of it is still in the earth…maybe a third of it's base.  A huge tree.  Old.   It fell when my son was here.  He,  his woman, their girl  child and i were sitting at the faux picnic table in the common area between C and B.  Talking,  when there was an ODD sound and our ears pricked like animals do,  we all turned in the direction,  a crunching shushing sound that seemed to last forever and then what i can best describe as a very soft gentle  Thud.   I can't even remember the exact sounds.  Couldn't at the time,  either.  I'd never heard such sounds before.  No context for them.  A TREE fell.  A tree maybe 70 80 feet tall.   Fell.   Simply let go.  At the juncture of it's trunk and the Earth.  Pulling loose.  The most astounding thing was how soft the sound was of it meeting the Earth…so…well….soft.  Soft.

I went to visit it today.  Spent a lot of time walking the forests,  seeing what work the Goats have done,  walking their paths.  It's  very different  forest than when i arrived.  Then it was THICK.  easy to lose one's bearings.   And amazingly,  that was from the vines of the poison oak  that climbed high into tree branches,  covered the paths,  was Everywhere.    It's gone now.  They've eaten it.  What will come up with the Rains remains to be seen.  But for now…gone.  Researching through UC Davis, there is no trace of it in goat milk.   As it goes,  there is a lot of ruckus,  buck/doe going on.  It will be this way through November.  We will breed some.  A few.  Kids in the spring.  Milking in the Spring.  

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