New Home, New Job

I settled into my new home last week -- a sweet little house in downtown Corvallis just five blocks from my new job and a one-minute walk through Central Park from the city library. The house has three sweet bedrooms (small by modern standards but more than adequate by mine), a kitchen, living room, bathroom, and basement. Five of us are packed in here, so the rent is cheap and the spirit is high. I love it! The inside of the refrigerator seems to be the only spot where space is tight, but unless we keep acquiring food and quit eating it, it shouldn't become a problem.

My room is a lovely little niche with hardwood floors, white walls that angle in towards the ceiling four feet off the ground, and a sunny window with more than satisfactory privacy for town living. A closet and three-drawer bureau are both built into the walls of my room, eliminating the need for much acquired furniture. Within a few hours of moving in, however, my housemates presented me with both a nightstand and a small bookshelf. I've since acquired the top half of a desk that was set out for free on the sidewalk earlier this week. If I can find a small stool just a foot or so high, the new piece should make a very decent, if not shallow, writing desk.

Most wonderfully, and a bit luxuriously, I've been gifted with a mattress to sleep on. When I moved into the house, I was fully intending to sleep on my sleeping bag and saddle blanket as I've been doing these past four months. I remembered the many fruitless hours I invested in trying to find a bed while living in Vermont, and decided I wasn't even going to waste time thinking about such things. I'd completely let go of the idea and was even looking forward to spending my next sedentery phase entirely bedless (save my bag and saddle blanket) -- "what a simple way to sleep!" I thought, "no bed to make -- just a sleeping bag to smooth. And it's entirely mobile and totally free."

I hadn't been in the house for five minutes when I'd been offered my choice of a mattress or futon! I ended up with a very cushy and new-looking double mattress scrounged up from the basement. I'd been excited at the prospect of avoiding the purchase of bedsheets, but I compromised with myself and found an attractive pair of mismatched flat sheets at Good Will the next day. One is olive green and the other is dusty rose and neither is form-fitted so I do, indeed, spend too much time carefully remaking my bed each morning (I like to leave my things in order). I have not decided yet whether or not I will try to acquire a blanket. Practically, I'm taken care of because I'm able to unzip my sleeping bad and use it as a blanket. Aesthetically, my sleeping bag is mummy-shaped and doesn't contribute to my perceived feng shui of the room.

This unintentioned mattress acquisition, however, is a perfect example of the wonders I've been experiencing of late. It seems the less I try to snatch at things, the more easily they come. What a relief! Meeting one's needs takes a lot of energy -- it's a lot easier not to need!

Let me talk about food now, because food is a real and totally valid need, assuming you're neither a sungazer nor set upon starving to death. Food is one thing I worry about and often (irrationally) wonder if I have enough of. I think I've already written about the wonderful bounty of blackberries and apples I had access to while staying with my muley out at the stable. I was a little concerned that moving into town would entail giving up my free food supply. Quite the contrary! Corvallis is the most food-full city I've ever experienced! There must be at least one house on every block with at least a tomato plant in the front yard, if not a full blown orchard, vegetable garden, or livestock operation. Just within several blocks of my house I have access to apples, grapes, pears, and honey, and have scouted out plums and chickens, too! There's even a bakery a few blocks away that puts left-over bread loaves in bins behind the store in the evenings -- I patronized that alley last week and came away with a very nice baguette. On top of the food grown right in town, one of my housemates is the assistant chef at a large CSA outside of town. She seems to bring home a new surprise every day... carrots, grapes, freshly baked sourdough bread. Quite delightfully, I borrowed a canner and was also offered the use of a cider press, so next week will be a busy one.

Honeychild is happy as ever. I sure miss her since I moved into town, though! I bike out to the stable almost every day to feed the mules and scratch Honeychild's withers. I'm going to try to borrow some driving lines soon so I can practice ground driving her some more. I've been thinking a lot about draft work and recently subscribed to the Small Farmers Journal which lends much space to discussion of draft power. Honeychild has been contributing to my urban gardening project, too -- yesterday I scooped two bins and four burlap feed sacks full of her manure. I brought it into town and will be using it in my new raised beds I'm building. My good friends in Corvallis are offering me lots of support in this new endeavor of mine -- my first winter garden! The ground in our back yard is hard as rock, but I've been loaned a pick, so I should be able to get it churned up, inch by inch.

More later, my sleeping bag calls...

~April