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The barn is next
It’s been three months since we moved into 555. Next week I have a meeting with Sasaki-san about renovating the 120 year old barn that sits next to the house. It was a dairy barn for generations, but its been out of use for decades. The floors are still dirt and mud, but there’s no…
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Turmeric Harvesting
I have a jungle of turmeric growing in my hatake garden plot. It’s all volunteers from the Kawasakis old garden. I didn’t do anything to call it forth, it just arrived in its own time. Turmeric is a beautiful broad leaf plant with exotic white flowers. Over the summer it was lush and green. When…
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Garden planning for climate change
I started writing this in August, but decided I was too novice to publish anything about garden planning. However, this week the USDA updated their plant hardiness zone map in the US and winters are skewing warmer, pushing areas into new Zones. So what I wrote is definitely correct. I have been vindicated, and here…
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Containerless
When we first looked at 555 in March of 2021, there were four shipping containers on the property. They were being used as storage sheds for household stuff, tools, and farming materials. Two were disassembled before the build started. One came down this summer when I wanted to use stones underneath it. This week, the…
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Simian Stirrings
This morning as I stood on the East Road with my coffee, waiting for the sun to show me what sort of day we will have, I heard rustling in the treetops on the ridge. Monkeys. I couldn’t see them but I observed the treetops for a quarter of an hour and heard the monkey(s)…
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Sunrises
I am an early riser. If am going to get things done, it’s likely to happen before breakfast. Maybe not three impossible things like the White Queen, but things, nonetheless. Morning is my time, though I am less focussed in the morning as I used to be. One of the things I have started doing,…
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Timeline of a rescue
2:30 am. I wake to strange sounds. A bird in distress? A really large cicada? I don’t recognise the noise. I’m half asleep but can tell something’s wrong. Sounds like it’s coming from outside. I get up and pierce the dark with a flashlight. Maura and Beryl come running towards me from the fishtern. Do…
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Carnage
Cats are apex predators and mine are at the top of that apex. I will spare you images of the discoveries I have made in the last couple of days, but let me list them because this is way more than usual: Anyway this morning’s trash had a lot of dead animals and their parts.…
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555: Things I Love
There might be ten things I’d like to change, but there are so many more things that I love about this house. That takes us to ten, matching the number of things I’d change. But there are so many more things that I like. I will continue… I could go on. The house is a…
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Housewarming
The 555 construction chapter closed out with a housewarming party on Sunday. Forty five people attended over the course of 6 hours. Our landowners, architect, contractor, several subcontractors and their families celebrated. And then there were neighbors and local friends who stopped by for a look and a chat. Tod’s Mom and her husband in…
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