Leaving the Nest Anxiety

Last day of summer 2013:
So much to do! so little time to do it in! We're leaving this nest on Oct 1 .. less than 10 days from now.

We planted our garlic bed this morning (100 cloves), after scouting the B'ham Farmer's Market to find a good hardneck variety. I'd purchased the softnecks from The Garden Spot out on Alabama yesterday. We have beautiful garlic, from this year's crop, in the basement storage area; but our crop was afflicted with rust shortly before harvest, so I thought it better to buy new seed. Is that paranoid? Or perfectionist? Maybe.

Richard has packed his "hockey bag" with 48 pounds of stuff. He suggests he could fill any space I have left over in my bag.
No, I don't think so, Mister.
Please don't count on my having any space left over.
I have promised to do a trial packing by Tuesday this next week ... a week before we fly. Maybe I could fill any space HE has left over?

On this beautiful, sunny-warm Saturday we drove out to Hovander Park, after lunch, for the Whatcom Skills Share Faire. Richard wanted to check in with Mark R., a sailboat cruiser he'd connected with in the Sea of Cortez, Mexico a few years back. Mark was billed as offering information about Everyday Knots. We found him at a table with his home-grown hazelnuts and his home-made shell and fossil jewelry on display. Delicious free samples of his hazelnuts made us think we should be doing something with those volunteer hazelnuts in the back yard. Hazelnuts are the same as filberts, Mark tells us. Growers in the US have come to consensus about using the name hazelnut instead of the French filbert.

There was a guy starting fires using friction, numerous displays about carding, spinning & weaving various animal fibers, a stage on which the storytellers and musicians maintained performances, and a man demonstrating the "dry pressure cooker" for vacuum-sealing jars of raisins, grains or beans as part of your Emergency Preparedness Program. We chatted with the Whatcom County Solar Guy, Jeffrey Utter of Home and Energy Solutions, and told him all about our new solar installation. He has a lot of experience with non-corporate solar and with Off-the Grid battery backup systems. So we might be talking more with him in the future.

For now, it was great to get back to the nest and check the solar power monitor to see that our little garage-top system had generated some 7 kilowatts today!
Richard's fixing dinner now, as I write. Pork chops from the grocery store, turnip grees & tomato sauce from our garden, and sweet corn from the Farmer's Mkt.
I weeded the front rhody bed and covered the space with beauty bark this afternoon after we got home. Only one of a dozen little garden projects to complete in the next week. Still have to tweak and organize my log-ins tonight - what a challenge. I want to have a nice short easy que-card to remind me of usernames and log-ins I have to have ... without creating a concentrated block of vital info that some thief might capture.

Weather should be awful, wet, windy, and nasty tomorrow, so maybe we'll drive down to Mt Vernon to take in the matinee performance of Pan, the Musical. I read in Cascadia that Wendy's part has been updated to show a strong female, with Pan helping her to find her true self. Hmmm. And the Lost Boys are billed as steam punk. Should be fun. You Tube offers this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8I0KKzOZo8
I like the line: "if you still your mind, you will learn to fly ... "


My new mantra: Estoy tranquilla. No es un problema, Todo sera bien. Ah! Muy bueno!