we're making a yard!

okay, not a yard, really. we won't be purchasing a riding lawn mower anytime soon, or anything. but we have been clearing the alder patch in front of the house and devising plans for apple trees, strawberries, razberries, and the like. (a fruit yard!) i love this time of year. even when it rains too much. there is something about all the tourists being gone and everyone coming down off the summer rush (yet the february edge hasn't set in yet) and those fall get togethers - dancing, whiskey, and the neighborhood bus ride home - and burning piles of brush. it almost makes me want to invest in a big stump cutter-outer (what are those things called, anyways?). i'll quit teaching and go into the brush-clearing business! the crazy part is that i'm slightly serious. anyways, here are a few picts of my favorite fall-time things: the last flowers from the garden + muddy boots, napping by the stove, and crazy chain-saw andy.

we're talking seldovia standards here

i had this whole long venting blog, which i thought was pretty funny (i would), but andy said it was "bottom of the barrel" and that i was adding to the problem. so you get nothing. sorry. he's keeping me in line, which is probably a good thing.

when it's low tide our internet sucks

so i had this conversation with sharon this weekend. it went something like this:

s: how do you have internet?
d: i dunno. there's this thing in the trees and then we've just got it. (shrug)
s: huh.
d: but when it's low tide it's really slow.
s: huh. (drink of margarita) that'd make a good blog entry.

so there you have it. inarticulate linwood jabber. it seems crazy - like another one of andy's goofy hypotheses/predictions/facts - but it's a tested theory, so it really IS true. low tide means our internet is fricking s-l-o-w. andy says it has something to do with the reflection off the water affecting something or other over on the homer side, but he's also been known to shoot off crazy minnesota caribou facts, unprompted, at the drop of a hat. (that andy!) all i know is it took me like a gazillion years to download this snazzy picture of him with his monster salmon. it's a silver; he caught it last weekend in the river, fishing with renfro.

dreaming of saunas

this photo is the view from the one-day-sauna spot, looking back up at the house. it seems like we've been talking about building a sauna forever. i have sauna layout drawings in old notebooks from the days of living in the chicken-coop. and maybe?, finally?, we're getting a bit closer to the real deal. we've got the spot picked out; we've got the sauna stove; and we've received the competitve nudge from mark and tracy up the hill. (they fired theirs up last weekend - the first in the neighborhood! - and it was lovely, lovely, lovely. so hot. laying on the grass afterwards, sipping gin & tonics, talking girl talk with the girls . . . man, there's just nothing else like a red-hot sauna and good friends to sweat with.) so, all we need is money, which will hopefully, miraculously, appear in our hands any day now. (by the way, what's up with this once-a-month-school-district-bullshit-paycheck? that's dumb.) andy has even promised to build a fiberglass wood tub to soak in. and the rain and cool temperatures and dying fireweed and dark nights, and. . . and . . . and . . . it all just makes your body ache for that good heat.

two years

today is our two-year anniversary! we slept in late and, at the moment, we're sitting at the kitchen table together, drinking coffee, eating Minnesota pancakes (so good!), and feeling mighty blessed. we spent the weekend camping with some crazy friends (mostly tracy . . . she moons children) up tutka bay. the "eye jay" was loaded down - nine people, four dogs, and all the gear. and tonight we'll eat at the madfish (the last night they're serving until next season) with our friend kevin. a fire is in the stove; my very handsome husband is flipping through the world atlas; toivey is crashed out on her bed; nikos is snoozing on the couch. it's all the very small things that make us feel so damn lucky.