A Day Off

It was my first day off during the new year. It began like my days off did nowadays. I woke at 3 because that was what time my medications were taken on weekdays and my organs would be expecting those same medications at the same time on my days off as well. I wandered around …

Building the Tree Boxes

Originally i had planned to winterize the property by the last day of September. That did not happen. Procrastination was not usually my thing. I was the one who showed up 50 minutes early to every appointment and 15 minutes early to every social gathering. I was the one that began studying for the certification …

One of These Things Doesn’t Belong…

I don’t want to talk about it. Its hard not to though when its the first thing visitors see in the yard. You drive up and BAM, there’s a laundry machine visible through the windshield. I never intended it to be there. It was supposed to go to the landfill, and when that didn’t happen …

The First of our Fruit Trees

When i was a child my mother came home one day with a stick in a pot. Everyone thought she was crazy because she’d paid money for a leafless stick. Well she planted that leafless stick in the ground next to our house. She watered it faithfully. During the winter she placed the plastic kids …

Cashew’s First Bath

When i first brought her home Cashew was too little to be able to effectively regulate her body temperature. She was too young to bathe so i just dealt with the fleas. I tried not to think about them but if i parted her fur with my fingers there were hundreds of them crawling all …

Plywood Window Shades

As spring began to make its presence known temperatures became more bearable and an unexpected side effect arose. Now it was too hot. The sun was streaming in through my untinted windows and warming the little tiny house like an oven. The air conditioner unit was struggling to keep up with the relentless trajectory of …

The Dog Disaster/ Chicken Run

I don’t know what idiotic idea i got lodged in my head the day i decided to pay thousands of dollars for a crew to build a 65 by 65 ft chain link dog run. Perhaps i thought if i made it big enough and nice enough she wouldn’t want out and therefore wouldn’t dig …

Sili Gets a Dog House

When i bought the property, my friend M said, “Let me know what you need and i’ll do whatever would be most helpful.” She offered to help me move boxes into the house but as i explained to her, the house was under 400 square feet…there were never any boxes to move…just things driven over …

A Self-sufficient House Plant

My coworker came up to me one day and said, “i got you a housewarming gift.” She disappeared and returned with a little brown box. She said, “i know you like to garden and you don’t have a garden yet at the new house because of the deer, but this plant is self-sufficient. You don’t …