8.25.10 Weather, Toms and Survival

The weather has been miraculously cool. Only in the 80's with a constant breeze. Just the sound of the breeze in the leaves is cooling. A perfect day for the hammock, if I had the time :) I hope it's cooling down for everyone.

It's still very dry here tho. the other day i guy rode by on his horse and they left as much of a dust cloud as cars usually do. I haven't hung clothes out for some times now. The inside of the house looks like it does when it is rainy, laundry hung all over to dry. And leaves are falling like Autumn, which also adds to the feeling of cool, but sadly it's because their to dry.

When we returned from Virginia the vegetable garden was lost. Not watered in 6 very hot days with no rain had taken it's toll. I did waste some water in hope that i could save my tomatoes. 8 varieties of heirloom toms, I was planning on eating, canning and selling at market. All lost. All but the Brandywines which still have good wick. I planted them later and in a different bed. Maybe ...

Thistle is almost completely well now and not one other goat has shown any signs of being ill. Just our poor Anya, who I think was weakened by depression. Today or tomorrow I'm going to move everyone and scrub down the goat house with Simple Green.

I rarely read the news but recently I read 2 articles that were important to me.

First was a story of 33 miners trapped several hundred feet down. The story said that all 33 survived for 17 days on just 2 days worth of food. Now, because humans tend to exaggerate terribly (cats and monkeys do as well) I'm sure they had more food then they say but! I'm also sure they didn't have a lot of food and certainly not enough to last that time. If they said they had 2 days worth then they probably had 4 days worth. making 4 days of food last over 2 weeks is no small thing. That they were able to ration and that they all cooperated enough not to make it work is an amazing and very important thing to me. As I read it I was eating supper of fish, puppies and potatoes. I put half my plate in the freezer to make another meal.

The other story I read was about the 60 miles, 10 days long traffic jam in China. Aside from me not being able to comprehend how that is possible, I thought it was highly interesting. I looked at a few pictures and saw that the people were making do and doing fine. bathing, playing games and napping in the shade of the big trucks, and simply surviving what many people would say they could never survive.

many years ago, when I was 16 or 17, I was applying for a job in a little store where the owner was watching the news. the news segment was about homeless people living in their cars. She exclaimed at a picture of a woman and her kids living in a station wagon. She was horrified and said things like .. she could never do that, she didn't understand how anyone could live that way, and how they must stink.

When she was done I applied for the job, got it and was to start the next morning. That night I bathed with a gallon jug of water I had filled at a gas station. Sometimes I bathed that way and sometimes I bathed in the sink of the gas station. That night I had a very hard time sleeping, thinking about my new job. When I finally did fall to sleep i dreamed of how wonderful it would be to have a car to live it. Living in a car was far from being homeless to me. I had lived in a car before and since and it's luxury compared living on the street. At the time I was living up under the eave of a bridge.

Perspective :)