When you blame the full moon

 It was going to be a bit of a different week for me, as the co-worker who opens was going on vacation on Wednesday and Thursday and that left it up to me to open the bakery. Wednesday went fantastic! Thursday was a shit show from the get go and I had to call the cops on my first customer of the day. From there, the downward spiral continued and I ended up in my bosses office on Friday crying, Saturday didn't go much better, and Sunday found me getting my head bit off by him for doing a job duty but not at the time he wanted it done. How do I sell donuts without donuts in the case. I ask? While his daughter stands at the register texting right in front of the customers and nothing gets said to her. Woodchuck also started crap with me via text while I was at work. This does not align with my purpose, my needs, and how I want to be surrounded in peace. Why do people not realize that we have the power to make the world we want, but it's not going to happen when people feed the dysfunction and what they don't want. It has taken me so long to become the person I am, one that fights against falling or being pushed down into holes each day, one who wants to feed and spread love, positivity and light, and I am getting buried each day by just the opposite. As usual, I am holding on longer than is best for my mental health, but I can't leave until I have another job lined up and I am hoping that things get better in the meantime. 

What is life like as an empath? As someone who cannot be around negativity for long periods of time or handle being blindsided by it when I am kind? If you can imagine a tornado around me, a personal one at that. As it swirls, parts of me are being tossed out, but instead of the tornado being a negative force, mine is positive. The parts of me that are flung are my love, joy, kindness, etc. But when those parts are flung out, it leaves an opening in the tornado for a short time, and when there are holes in my aura, things make it in. Things that make me feel icky, things that bring me down, hurt me, things that are not my fault yet that make me suffer until I can build that tornado up again and close the holes. 

I can feel things just walking into a room, I can see the things that nobody else does, I can love in a way that most cannot, I can see both sides of a situation, I continually make things easier for others (or try to at least) while I am torn apart along the way. I don't ask for thanks, I don't ask for anything other than the basics of being safe and not to be taken advantage of. It's a battle I continually fight and always feel like I am losing at. How do I live in this world, how do I participate in a society where I am having a hard time finding others like myself. I need a safe place to land and a posse of positivity because friends, I am damn tired. It may be unrealistic of me in the standards of current society to want peace in my life, a safe haven, days filled with positivity and love, but if it's true that we create our own reality then it should not be out of my reach. It may not be important to others, but it's a GD prerequisite of my daily life moving forth. So mote it be )O(

Woodchuck and I made a trip to the land after work on the day that I had to call the cops on the customer, thinking that it would make me feel better. He worked on sealing the concrete floor in the barn, and I was sticking nearby and clearing invasives along the side of the driveway. Most of this had been done within the past couple of the years, but has grown back and the neighbor moved a small pull- along trailer and that opened up new spaces for me to get to. 

I was immediately overwhelmed. Such a small speck in the Universe fighting against such large forces and feeling like I am doing it all alone. Going back to the same spaces over and over again and circling and chasing my own tail, But this is important, so I jumped in and started working on a large patch of bittersweet that is choking out our ditch along the property line and grabbing hold of a Poplar. I did what I could and moved on to find more honeysuckle, autumn olive, multi-flora rose, and something that I haven't seen elsewhere out there yet.....burning bush.

And just stood there and cried. The place that has been my source of peace and healing is getting overrun with crap and I'm struggling to fight it and keep it under control. I take breaks, I cry, but then I jump right back in and keep going. It has always been me against the world and I am a moonchild, a Keeper of Light, carrier of my ancestors love and knowledge and at the end of the day that is most important and wins over all of the bullshit that humans keep slinging around at each other and all of the inhabitants of the blue marble we are all on.

I still honor the Full Moons and all of the chaos we feel under them. I see the beauty, I see the magick, I see the greater plan. Tear me down along the way, I will only be rebuilt stronger. Darkness will not overtake the Light that we bring and a balance needs to be found in so many areas of the world. Love will find you, it will find me, we will heal and we will carry on the battle. I will stand beside Darkness because it does not scare me, it only motivates me to create the shadows that Light brings when it shines on. )O(

Uh-one project, uh-two project, uh-three project, ah, ah, ah....

 We were ready to hit it! Beautiful morning, storms forecasted later in the day, and a long list of projects to get done before they did. We had to drop my car off again at the garage down the road first thing in the morning and then Woodchuck drove us to the land in his car. I admit that I sometimes miss being the passenger, as I do 99% of the driving when we hit the road. It was a welcomed change of pace!

As soon as we got to the land, we were greeted with the most adorable trespassers. We think they might belong to the family a couple of houses down who have a very tiny homestead. They were chill, adorable, and very hungry for all of the little bugs. I asked them to please eat as many ticks as they could! I wasn't sure of the sounds they make, as I tried various ones to get them comfortable, but they ended up making a sound between a duck and a chicken and are very quiet. They got within a couple of feet of us as we made our way around the land. And their feathers? Absolutely beautiful! I hate that I have seen them for sale at the craft stores :( GuineaFowl!

We tend to get a lot of adorable trespassers and hitchhikers at or from the land. This jumping spider hitched a ride on me recently back to my car to get in the air conditioning! 

                                                            He's cooling his little butt, lol.

Thank goodness for the wind, because it was humid and the sun was HOT!

While Woodchuck opened the storage container, I walked the area. Salsify needed to be pulled.

And I saw a lot of white blooms high off of the ground that I needed to investigate. Unfortunately, a massive Multiflora Rose :( This is an area we haven't touched yet in the clean out of invasives, so I'm really not surprised.

On to the first project! Creating a fence barrier in the ditch coming off of the pond so that when Woodchuck puts the fish in, they can't escape. He ordered some Tilapia after finding out that they can help clean up the pond. All that money he spent on chemicals and they didn't make one bit of difference. I have to admit that the sound of him sloshing around in the water sounded very refreshing, lol. For the first time ever, I put my hands in it to wash them, and it felt so good! He's worried about snapping turtles (as he should be), but honestly, I hate being afraid and just want to be smart about how we interact with natural places.

And done! We didn't know if Tilapia jump, so we made it two fence panels high just in case. It's anchored at the bottom with large pieces of stone and brick. 

Project number two, which I don't have pictures of, was us trying to transplant some volunteer elderberry babies. They didn't like it much, immediately went into shock, but it was honestly worth a try since where they were growing gets mowed and they would never mature there. I watered them well, and I'm sure we got the storm at the land too which watered them even more.

Project number 3 was capping off one of the drainage pipes in the forest. I am not 100% confident that this was a good idea. When we bought the land we were told that the start of the pipe had been capped off, however, we could see water flowing from it, so unless there is a break somewhere in it, or it has drainage holes in it along the way, that information was false. So we sawed off the broken part, capped it, placed a brick against the cap incase of pressure build up, covered it and marked it with a flag. I'll keep an eye on the forest to see what happens, but we were told the beginning of this starts at the house North of this pipe. It was where the previous owners mother lived. There is a family with some farm animals living there now and we honestly don't know what is going into that pipe and then draining on to our land. We tried stopping there recently, but nobody answered the door.

Before we went our separate ways to work on our own things, I walked around a bit. I found this tiny and lovely Parasola mushroom. 😍

And look! Some of the flooding has gone down in the back ditch! I would say it was a good 4-6 inches shallower now, though it was still very high.

It was time to head into the forest! Because I keep going in at the same spot and getting stopped at the same spot, I decided to go to the very end and work my way back. I didn't care if there was standing water, I needed to at least get my eyes on what was going on. I was greeted with a new patch of Packera! It is now dappled throughout the forest.

I did my usual pulling of cleavers, and babies of honeysuckle, bittersweet, multiflora rose, dug up lily of the valley, cut troublesome grapevine and inadvertently would dig up critters. I couldn't get information to load on this guy while I was in the forest, so I left him. Turns out he's quite the troublesome creature with crops and fruit trees. 😟

But I was SO excited to find the Twayblade Orchid again!!!! And is that a little baby orchid coming up next to it???!!! This is the only one I have found in our forest since purchasing the land 3 years ago! I always put a little cage system around it so that I can find it easier next time out and can monitor its growth.

I was sneezing non-stop and had faucet nose. Everything was covered in a layer of pollen, even feathers that the birds had dropped, and there were piles of cottonwood cotton throughout.

                    A species of harvestmen arachnid. They are super fast runners, and even jump! 

UGH, the first time I see the wild strawberries ripen and he ran over them with the tractor while mowing 😢 I memorized the location and will check on the ones here that weren't ripe yet.

These babies were huge! And although I was tempted to harvest them, thinking they were chicken of the woods, I needed to get out of the forest in a timely manner because the storms were moving in and the winds were really picking up. I also don't trust myself on identifying anything else but morels. I sent the picture to a mushroom guy just North of me and indeed, this was not chicken of the woods and not edible! 😱

                                I named this worm Jaba. He was so fat, and didn't even move! 

I checked on the blueberry bushes before we left, and they are getting closer to becoming actual fruit. Since we trimmed the bushes, they look so much healthier!

We picked my car up from the garage down the road, came home, worked out, and Woodchuck wanted to go to town to grab some groceries and dinner. Of course he waited until the storms were starting!

They followed us back home! I hurried up and jumped in the shower and was just getting out when the sirens went off. 

There was a confirmed microburst just North of us!

So depending on the weather for the rest of the week, Woodchuck wants to head back after work to finish weed whacking. I've also tracked down some free wood that he can use for the walking bridge, but there was a lot of interest in it and I don't know that it won't be snatched up before we can get there to pick it up. He has been toying with the idea of buying an old truck to make situations like these easier, instead of having to rely on my car and the trailer we hook up to it. The most recent repair, which I have to say that even though I've spent about $3,000 to get her fixed this year, are things that have been ongoing that are just now getting noticed and fixed. Yesterdays fix was a leaky valve cover gasket and although the guys knew there was a leak, they didn't tell me and didn't move forward with fixing it. Once I was told that there was a leak, I asked Woodchuck why she hadn't been fixed? He shrugged. So they fixed that yesterday, but because it gone so long with the leak, my spark plug wells were FULL of oil and all of that had to be changed too. So a $200 job ended up being $360. I'm glad she's fixed, and the guys at the garage are great, but damn it, Woodchuck! Why oh why does he let things go until they are a bigger, and more expensive, issue?! I tackled him and play choked him--which would have been hilarious to anyone watching. I'm 5 foot, 140 pounds. He's 5' 8" and 200 pounds. But seriously, my car is very, very important to me. Anything we spend a large amount of money on and rely heavily on is! I take care of these things to help them last longer and reduce issues. He had speculated that I was having spark plug issues because I kept telling them that the idle was weird on her, even with all of the other fixing they had done this year. Now we know why. 

Oh and! Today embarks on the first of many appointments to meet with bankers about construction loans. One step closer! 🙌

I will follow

 I've been in my head a lot lately, feeling like I am on the cusp of something meant solely for me. But even in my own quest, I am always thinking of others. I am continually fascinated by how humans are affected by the Cosmos and Forces of Nature. Celestial events that make us feel like we are completely out of control of ourselves...mind, body, and soul. We just came out of a geomagnetic storm, and paired with the oral steroid the Rheumatologist wanted to try me on, I was a force to be reckoned with. I would have gladly gone to jail for beating up stupid people. But I'm off of the medicine now and calming down, ready to tap in to my potential, my strength, my weakness, and transcend yet again.

One thing I have continually denied myself over the years is spending money on flowers in the landscaping. Food plants were always a priority, anything else I considered a waste of money that we didn't have to waste. But now? I am not denying myself beauty, color, joy, smiles. I am working my ass off and I want to play just as hard as I work. So I took myself to a local greenhouse that specializes in native plants. I have gotten native plants before from them, and this time I just wanted some color. While my idea to prevent more flooding on the patio worked by planting some edges of grass to absorb the water, keeping it cut proved to be more difficult than I foresaw. I won't mow because it sits lower than the concrete, and weed whacking it isn't efficient. So we pulled the grass out of two corners to see how this would work for us. So far we love it! It provides color and some happiness. I got petunias, marigolds, and this beautiful red one that butterflies and hummingbirds like! 

Another large project ticked off of the list! The concrete has been poured in the pole barn now! Woodchuck is looking forward to hanging up his tools (and I am too, because honestly, we have four of everything between home and the land and he still can't find what he needs 😁)

It has been amazing to watch the forests transform with the opening of the space to build. Any hardwoods along the edges are leafing out now the whole way down the tree instead of just at the top where they only had light because of crowding. And to see what was waiting for the light to make itself known! (pictured is sassafras).

Although you will lose a boot in the water and mud getting to them, the blueberries that we trimmed are alive and well! I owe some to a friend who helped us build the pole barn, so I was glad to see that I will be able to share them this year.

My fight against invasives continues, but I can see the difference it's making as more and more native plants are taking over the spaces where I remove invasive/non-native ones. This is Dames Rocket, and while she's pretty and smells great, she has to go. Not to be confused with our native Phlox, Dames Rocket has four petals on the flowers, while Phlox has five. When we move out to the land and are ready for landscaping, I will be hitting it hard getting native plants in the ground.

These beauties are volunteer Elderberry and I am really hoping that Woodchuck didn't mow them over yesterday when we were at the land. The plan is to transplant them now into a strip of land that will allow them full sun and some wet feet, and where they won't get mowed over each week. 

I headed into the woods, knowing the mosquitoes were going to be insane. I couldn't stop moving, if I did I was surrounded by them. I had on full coverage clothing, layers of chemicals on my clothings, plus a visor with a net on the front, and a gator over my head and ears. With all of the rain we've had, and the forest flooding, we knew it was going to be a bad year for them. Sadly, my youngest is allergic to them, so his help out there will be severely limited (not that he's willing to help, but I digress). 

The day was perfect to be out there yesterday. Storms were not forecasted until later in the day, so we got there early. No humidity and lovely breeze...that doesn't make it to me while I am deep in the forest. But I don't care. The crows are overhead, dropping their feathers for me to find as gifts for taking care of their home (and I had a great idea for some art to make from them!) I blew through several rows in the forest, pulling cleavers, bittersweet, garlic mustard, honeysuckle, and LOV. Sadly, each time I go in, I get stopped at the same point and never seem to get past that! I had to stop twice to go back to Woodchuck to help him with his stuff, and then a storm blew in.

I am finding so many wonderful things! Like small patch of Wood Ferns, now the third species of fern I've found on the land.

And finally, a native grape instead of the ones that kill my trees! I will continue to watch it though, to make sure it doesn't damage anything.

                                                Sooo much Sweet Cicily dappled throughout!

The storm blew in fast, and I was in the middle of the forest when I heard thunder. I got out just as I felt a couple of drops fall, and more thunder rolling in on the winds. I got back to the shipping container in time for it to rain harder, and as Woodchuck was closing it up, a lightening bolt struck WAY too close for comfort. We both ran for the car and were very lucky as another one struck overhead right when we were getting in! I consider it the perfect ending to a very difficult week for me. To become so angry, to let it out, and then there's calm. We came home and went our separate ways, me to the sewing room to continue cleaning out and packing up. 💜

Today, my one day a week to get caught up on chores, art, socializing, blogging, etc. finds me harried as usual every Tuesday. But I made myself throw ingredients into the crockpot for chicken bone broth. I saved veggie scraps along the way and the guys recently had a rotisserie chicken that I am using the carcass from. I find it giggle worthy that I won't eat the chicken but will utilize the body of it. And it makes me think of all of the other things in my life that I try to utilize. Some times I succeed and some times not, but after a recent conversation with the youngest about feeling stuck in life (he does, not me), some times we get too caught up in viewing our lives from the vantage of what we are missing. When we do that, we will never feel fulfilled. We must feed what it is that we want to grow, like viewing life from the vantage of all of the wonderfulness we are surrounded with and by. That makes it so much easier to then see how fulfilled we truly are even if that doesn't meet the guidelines of normal society. They can pound sand and take their expectations elsewhere. I will follow the call of the crows. )O(

When last I left you....

 We had answers! We had options! And yeah, that went down in flames quickly. We did receive the quote from the company we had out to look at the flooding issue and well, at $15,000 ($5,000 per project, essentially), we had to decline their service. Woodchuck is pretty adamant that we can fix the back issue on our own, but I am not as confident. Not at all. And now we found another pipe in the CRP forest that is draining water from a property/house North of us, and we have another pipe draining directly into the flooding ditch from that same area. So we need to find out where those start. Nothing can be easy, can it? We saw that the woods to the West of us is up for sale. We can't swing it right now, but man is it tempting to snatch up all this is up for grabs around us so I can nurture it and return it to native plants!

We have had to take a couple of days off from the land recently. One to go get our boy from college! He was originally supposed to graduate this past weekend but with him changing majors, he has some more classes to take now. He has been home since 4 p.m. on Friday (today is Tuesday of the following week) and all he has done is game, do dishes a couple of times at our request, see friends, sleep and eat. No Summer job lined up (he does have an online Summer course he has to take that will help keep him busy), so we have LOTS of projects between our house, the land, and our oldest sons house for him to do. We have had numerous conversations already about how he's not going to loaf around...which leads to him walking away. For someone who doesn't want to be babied, he's not acting very mature. I have it in my sights to talk one on one with him, and reiterate that I will not work harder for his future than he is. I am busting my ass as it is. Word.

I had have to pivot from cutting and treating honeysuckle and autumn olive to pulling garlic mustard and digging out lily of the valley from the forest. Because of the flooding in said forest, I've had to resort to just snapping off the flowers on the LOV because I can't get to the roots in some areas right now. I will continue this struggle for the rest of the year into the Fall.

Hundreds of garlic mustard babies that I will need to go back and pull when they are bigger, which is likely right now. 👆

Dozens of sporadic Lily of the Valley patches throughout the forest, originating from a homestead just North of the forest. 👆

But some areas are too flooded for me to be able to dig the plants out and get the roots system completely. 👆

I also recently took a close friend to the land to mushroom hunt. It was nice sharing that magickal place with her and just walking around as opposed to loading up gear and trudging through flora, heat, and bugs to work. We had a wonderful time together just being there and listening to nature.

I had a follow up appointment yesterday with my rheumatologist, thinking it was going to be a waste of time, gas and money. BUT, she prescribed an oral steroid for me to try for 6 days and track my progress on it. How I respond to it can tell her how to proceed for long-term medications. She is still leaning towards Psoriatic Arthritis for me, but because the Dermatologist has diagnosed me with psoriasis, eczema, contact dermatitis and rosacea, she doesn't feel comfortable yet making it a definitive. I am doing my best to keep my stress under control, but she feels like my poor sleep isn't making things any better.

Right now we are struggling to meet all financial goals that are needed at one time: college tuition, car repairs, get the concrete poured in the pole barn, fix the flooding issues, save for retirement. But I am capable, I am guided, and I am held by the Universe. Even the doctor said she can see that I push through obstacles. I have my eyes on the target and I WILL succeed. 💜

I have a new piece of finished art that is now in the Etsy shop. I continue my search for a way to get my art into the world. I will not be part of a popularity contest, I will not settle, and I will be in control of my own destiny )O( www.soapwoodartstudio.etsy.com