every day is a good day
Before a fern can be born, it needs a soft bed. Soft fern beds don’t come from the mall, they grow from baby moss.
And when the bed of moss is large enough, a baby fern can start to grow. They’ll grow together until one day, they form a lovely garden in the sky.
On a lark, I planted some popcorn last spring. After letting the ears dry for over three months this fall and winter, I tried popping some today. Success. It’s exciting when things you didn’t think you could grow, do. We’re indoctrinated to believe that we have to buy our food, and yet it’s not true. We can grow a lot of things ourselves.
Chickens are as curious as cats which are as curious as dogs which are as curious as ? Curiosity is universal. Researchers have identified many parts of the brain such as the anterior cortices, the striatum, the hippocampus and dentate gyrus, the parahippocampal gyrus, the amygdala, the anterior pituitary, the nucleus accumbens, the precuneus, and caudate nucleus as being involved in curiosity.
So when Miasa and her 11 week old chicks come running to see what we’ve brought home in the truck, their brains are firing away on all cylinders, as are the brains of many of the other chickens. They’ll keep investigating what we’ve brought until their curiosity is satisfied.
On a frosty morning, the new solar system looks like a piece of art. This morning, the installers put in the production meter to tie the system to our electric system. With sunlight streaming down, I watched our meter stop incrementing until late afternoon. Early in the afternoon, the state electric inspector arrived, inspected the system, and gave the OK for our local utility company to come and install a new meter. The current meter isn’t capable of subtracting usage from our account. The new meter will count backwards when we are generating more power than we are using.
Even the sun celebrated this evening by painting the evening clouds.
No matter where you are, there is something that happens or exists only there. For starters, wherever you are, it’s the only place someone can find you. Today is egg delivery day, and as I pedal through the valley to Edison, I pass the Chuckanut Mountains. These graceful mountains are the only place where the Cascade Mountains, stretching some 700 miles from northern California into southern British Columbia, tumble into the sea. For a mere 10 miles, the Cascades brush against the gentle waves of Puget Sound.
When the sun is out, this is what I see when I deliver eggs. On cloudy days, the tops of the mountains are often hidden. At times, wisps of fog skirt them. Occasionally, the mountains will sparkle with fresh snow. This is a very special, only here, kind of place.
