We have not held our traditional weekly Thursday Community Dinners for two weeks now, so we’re actually excited about the next one, tomorrow evening! It does help to take time off, even from what you love. Also, during that time, both Rebecca and Solan were gone, which meant that the CSA had to function pretty much with only Dan and myself (as vegetable washer). Here’s last week’s offering, Dan at the helm on an extremely hot and humid evening. Luckily, we worked in the shade.

CSA

Value-added food this time? Lemon balm and spearmint tea, in quart jars. (Last Friday was pesto; Fridays before that, radish kraut, sourdough bread.)

Monday Morning Work Party

Rebecca posted on our private fb group page re: the tasks before us. Notice her language: she seems to have returned from her time away with great appreciation for her podmates!

Early Monday morning she told us she would be out there by 9 am rather than 10 am, to beat the heat. Would we like to join her?

Well, not that early . . . except for one chicken.

An hour later, both Solan and Tim (a periodic visitor from Indy) joined her.

Meanwhile, Dan and I took her up on the idea of pulling trees. I had in mind especially the constantly emerging wild hibiscus on the north side of the Overhill house. On the one hand we appreciate it, since its blooms are pretty, and it camoflages both our windows; on the other hand, it’s just too wild and has gone out of control. Damn! Didn’t take a “before” picture. But here we are, nearly finished, leaving only the original hibiscus to shade the windows, after about 90 minutes.

That’s Dan above, hunched over on the left, sawing down an errant black walnut that we didn’t even know was there until now, so thick was the hibiscus profusion.

Here’s what the little tree looks like fully down. He’s going to make a walking stick out of part of the trunk, so nice and straight! Perfect size for the hand.

In order to accomplish our task of clearing, all of us were using one tool, the shovel. Dan was using our fantastic “Puller Bear” to extract some of the roots.

And to down that pesky black walnut? His special hand saw.

Small, appropriate technology. Where would we be without these tools, so perfectly formed for their function, in concert with human labor? I thought about this again this morning, when a gigantic truck rig pulling a platform with two huge, tractor like mowers on top drove up across the street, proceeded to mow that lawn to the accompaniment of huge roaring, in about ten minutes. We have traded our connection to nature for “efficiency”! How different from our trusty hand mower here, with which I walk what land in grass we do have left, blessing both the mower and the grass with every foot step.

Aha! At about 10:30, Andreas also arrived, and with Tim took over the puller bear for more clearing of tiny trees in the backyard of Overhill. Yes!

But my favorite part of this day was trying to actually catch in a photo the delicate, lacy, complex, subtle colors and layering of the mimosa blooms with their seeds. Who says “God” isn’t Nature?