New Life in the Woods

I have had yet another visitor — my mother Mari. She came up for my birthday and stayed a few days. Despite a near disaster when I discovered I had lost the keys to the lock on the gate as I was about to drive her back to the airport late Monday afternoon (I hacked a new path down an old logging road to get the car out… and found the keys in the driveway by the garden immediately after I got back), we had a great visit overall.

She flew in Saturday morning and we drove to Grants Pass, stopping in town to visit the Farmer’s Market and Flea Markets there. We picked up a bunch of veggies and a small coffee maker, all of which we used to great effect to make a few very fine meals (the corn we bought was especially good). On Sunday we ran some errands at a nursery, department store, and hardware store in the morning, collecting fruit from trees along the road on our way back. We spent much of the afternoon making Plum/Apple/Blueberry jam and Apple Butter. The jam turned out to be very tart and a bit more like a syrup than a jam, but still good. The Apple Butter is fantastic and I will probably make another batch at some point. We made both in the electric Wok that was gifted to me by a friend of my mothers. It turns out to have myriad uses!

On Monday morning we replanted some herbs that we had bought the day before and filled some planters with potting soil, planting several varieties of lettuce and vegetables that should do well on my back deck (where the rabbits can’t get at them). Although you can’t see it well in this photo, many of the seeds are sprouting already, just two days after we planted them! I noticed what looked like a bunch of unburied seeds this morning and actually reburied a couple before I realized they were seed shells being pushed out of the soil on tiny stalks! When the first leaves appear in a day or two I’ll take another picture to show off.

We didn’t quite have enough time to explore the area as much as I’d hoped (visitors can be a good excuse to do exploring that I might not otherwise find time for), we did walk all around the property and I showed off all the repairs I had done. I think she had a good time, even if it was a bit tiring, and I look forward to hosting more visitors in the future. Each week sees improvements at the cabin and it becomes more and more livable all the time. Before this visit I was able to install a new shower head and expand the shower rod so that the curtain doesn’t hang down the middle of the tub (both of which help makes showers pure pleasure now), clean and straighten up a lot, and install a small table on the back deck so we could enjoy the outdoors in relative comfort. Maybe by next time I will have a few more types of jam or jelly to share and some fresh fish caught from the Rogue river!