scuba diving and a septic tank

But first, one more picture from the museum demo. This is why we do these things.



Anyway, da boys in the group went scuba-diving after the demo was over. Here they are getting ready....



While they were in the water, da girls wandered around the shoreline, taking in the sights.....



.....collecting seaweed to dye wool with...



And then laughing at Darrell when he flopped up on the shore.



Now, on the other hand, this past week hasn't been quite so fun. A year ago, our septic tank overflowed. We dutifully called in a septic service - it had been raining a lot, and it's an old house. These things happen.

They drained the tank and then two weeks later..... it overflowed again. This can't be good.

So some exploration was done, and the verdict? It's dying. It's old, no longer up to code, and the clay outflow pipes are full of tree roots. Surprise surprise. The yard is full of trees.

The nice septic people bored out some of the pipes, buying us a year or two to decide what to do with it. That's where we pick up the story again... in these past few days, we had the whole system replaced.

That sounds simple, doesn't it?

Holes are dug, and foundations drilled...


This is the crawl space under the addition through which the new septic lines had to be routed. The new hole through the foundation can be seen in the back wall. Our plumber, brave soul that he apparently is, had to get in there to do the job. I don't think I could do it.


While those insignificant tasks were going on, there was this big machine digging out an even bigger hole in the yard...


The bathroom wall (yes, my freshly painted pink walls) had to be cannibalized to fix some pipes that had to brought up to "code" as well.


The tank gets lifted in....quite a feat around trees, sheds, and a Bell telephone wire inconveniently placed.


And connected.... five metres away from the house, as per "code". I'm thinking that this whole "code" thing is a real nuisance. I haven't died for living in a house with an out-of-code septic tank for the past five years. Let's not even get into "permits" and "inspections", shall we?


All the time, that big machine keeps digging out the big hole.....


.....in order that the weeping bed and pipes can be laid down.


This is as far as the refilling process got before the rain stopped them yesterday.


The yard is now a collection of mountains of topsoil waiting to be spread out neatly....whenever the rain stops for a sufficient amount of time.

*sigh*

Karen

Great trip, back to the garden

Well now, last year's trip got blogged about on the road, almost every day we were gone. This year? Not so much.

We've been back home now for a few days and I've been unpacking and doing laundry and gardening and playing with the pictures. Neil pretty much went right back to work. I have more available vacation time so I took more time. I'm back to the grindstone on Monday.

Anyway, without further ado then.... a few pictures.


This is from our last day through the Adirondaks. It was overcast and rainy through most of the trip, but I found this lovely flower growing by one of our stops.


Got to the Haffenreffer Museum, and while I completely forgot to take any pictures of the Museum itself.... I did take a picture of their beach. Apparently, I have a strong preference for nature shots.

The DARC folks are referred here by their re-enactment names.



Bera and Unn talk over some changes to their area.



Ketill beats on some hot metal - he's our blacksmith.



Ketill lectures Kevin Smith, the Chief Curator and Deputy Director of the Haffenreffer Museum.



Grimmi sits in front of one of the typical Norse a-frame tents.



This is me in front of my warp-weighted loom. I also demonstrated spinning with a drop spindle, how to separate tog and thel in Icelandic sheep fleece, and some of the colours that I've gotten from natural dyes.



Kjarval talks to some of the folks who came to visit.



Ragnarr talks to some of the other visitors. He sent an awful lot of little girls my way to learn how to spin, in order that they have proper skills to nab a husband.



These are some of Ragnarr's trade goods. Too bad that we weren't allowed to really trade things. Could have been fun.



This is a game called Hnefatafl - tafl for short. Neil (the hubby, aka Ragnarr) has articles on how to play the game here, and Darrell and Neil also sell a version of the game here.



Rig fetches some water for the kitchen area.



Windborne Farms brought some of their Icelandic sheep for people to gawk at. Icelandic sheep have a distinctive look to them. Most have horns - Windborne has polled all of their sheep. Icelandic sheep also have two distinctive parts to their fleece - one of the very few breeds left that have not been gentically altered over the past thousand years. Tog is the long hairy outer coat, and the thel is the short downy undercoat.

I think they're pretty.



These are some of the folks from the Higgins Armory. They came out this year to round out the demonstration with a combat display.

And then.....on Monday, the boys went scuba-diving and I got a whole bunch of neat shots of the area. But I think at this point, I'll wait a day or two for the next post. This one's plenty long enough as it is.

Karen

blogging from... Rhode Island!

So, we're on holidays, of a sort. We're out in Rhode Island, playing at being Vikings for the Haffenreffer Museum on Saturday and Sunday.

So it's partially a working vacation. But still.... it's Rhode Island. :)

And I get a lot of hits sent to my site from Sheila Lennon's list of Gardening Blogs for the Providence Journal. :) I entered myself a few years ago when we came to visit the Haffenreffer for the first time.

Now, by "we", I mean the Dark Ages Recreation Company. Most of the time, it's a hobby. It's why I do Viking Age weaving, spinning, and naalbinding. But sometimes we recover our costs from museums for the traveling to entertain and educate and draw the public in.

Oh, okay.... you catch me. I'd probably spin and weave and naalbind anyway, having learned about them, just because I like being crafty. I've learned how to knit, although I generally prefer crochet (gasp, the horror! :)). I grew up learning more then any human being should about ceramics, and it's left me with a desire to learn more about pottery instead.

A year ago, I started making glass beads with a hothead torch (lampwork) but I haven't put a lot of time in on it yet. So many things to do, so little time!

And of course, there's gardening.....the usual chatter of this blog.

No pictures yet on the trip, the weather's been kind of overcast and rainy. We drove through the Adirondacks simply for the pleasure, but most of that is in the memory, not the camera. Ah well....

Maybe the demo on the weekend will make it into the camera. :)

Karen

3 things

In lieu of a real post, for lack of a present brain....I ripped off this meme. Although if I couldn't think of three things in any given question, I deleted the whole question.

Three people who make me laugh
1. my husband
2. Leif the licky
3. Ginger cat

Three things I can do (with varying degrees of talent)
1. spin / weave
2. photography
3. facilitate academic research

Three things I can't do ('though I continue to attempt them now and then)
1. whistle
2. academic research (actually absorb the content)
3. meditate

Three things I'm doing right now
1. drinking coca cola
2. watching the Eureka premiere on Space
3. blogging

Three things I want to do before I die
1. travel Europe
2. do the things I can do many times better
3. do the things I can't do (above)

Three skills I'd like to learn
1. play the guitar
2. play the piano
3. tablet-weaving

Three favourite foods
1. chocolate
2. icing sugar
3. maple nut fudge

Three beverages I drink regularly
1. coca cola
2. water
3. water

Karen

I'm a little behind on the reporting

Last weekend, da hubby....


and his friend, Darrell (who writes Hammered Out Bits) ...


....went scuba-diving.


Vandy (who is sometimes known as Anti-V) and I alternated being watching the bubbles, enjoying the pleasant weather, taking pictures, sewing and spinning. Sorry, no pics of us enjoying our activities.

Although, at dinner afterwards, Neil decided to play with my hair.


At home in the garden:

This spotted lilly is finally blooming. Of course I don't know it's exact name. :)


This feverfew is still blooming, while it's neighbouring feverfew stopped blooming a few weeks ago. My garden is very strange this year.


This is just a small part of the harvest to date. The tomatoes have been quite prolific this year.


Karen

MichFest 2006

Well. I went back to the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival for the first time in 11 years. The last one I attended was the 20th anniversary fest, and this was the 31st.



Ya know how everyone says 'you can't go home again'?

Well, what if you do go home and everything is exactly as you remember it, but you find out that you've changed?

I found my way to my campsite, the same darned area I've always had, and it was waiting for me. 11 years later. And there were even other Canadians nearby. :)

I love that spot in the woods.



Over the next two days, I discovered that I'm not ageing as well as I'd like. My friend Janet is 12 years older, and I think she handled the physicality of camping better then I did. I need to take care of my body better.

I discovered that I really don't have as much patience as I might have before, or the ability to shrug it off, or that I notice more and judge more quickly.

The Festival kitchen doesn't compost it's food waste? Like... say what? Okay, so when someone else mentioned this on the Festival bulletin boards, the enormority of the task got explained, and I kind of understand. But surely there must be other alternatives to simple landfilling.

Why did it feel like all 3000 women in attendance had to walk up and down the aisles all throughout the concerts without even pausing during the songs as the Festival etiquette requests? Why did so many use flash photography, which is also requested not to happen by the Festival etiquette?

Why were there so many women playing with glowsticks during the nightstage concert? More landfill, and not so happy chemicals in them to boot.

Why is the Trans issue still an issue, a dozen years later? Why can't transsexual women respect the Festival's preference to be for girls and women who were raised as women in the same skin they've always been in? It's just one little week of women-only space. If I wanted to spend the weekend with male energy, I'd have stayed home with my favourite source of it - the hubby. Is it so much to ask?

Why did so many women not show up for their workshifts? Workshifts build community, make the festival more accessible financially, and are fun to boot!

It seemed like.... it was one great big party, and the social consciousness has flown the coop.

It's probably just as well that I didn't go back for the 30th anniversary party last year. I'd had have been that much more annoyed, with more then twice the number of women partying themselves silly in the woods.



And yet.... still... somehow, I feel fulfilled. I took a nap on sunday afternoon, loving that quiet spot in the woods, surrounded by women's voices in the distance. The comedians were hilarious. I discovered some new music. Issa (the artist formerly known as Jane Siberry) was her usual wonderfully quirky self. And she certainly impressed the audience with her attire on stage. :)

And after a decade's intervention that at some point included a serious crash in self-confidence around driving - I didn't kill us on the way down, or the way back.



Karen

placeholder post

Hi all,

Here's a few images from last week to hold the place of a post while I sort out the trip to Michfest in my mind.

Lily of some sort...


Sunflower, planted late in the year and just getting started. I hope it's big and tall next year.


White coneflower.


Brown eyed susans and false sunflowers, mixed.


It's a liatrus of some sort.


Clearly, there's a theme here with regard to my style of gardening. While I try to remember to plant the tags next to the plants so I can remember what they are, that doesn't always happen. And I have a brain like a sieve with regards to remembering plant names all by myself.

My backup brain (aka the hubby) says "it's your garden" when he doesn't remember either.

Clearly, I'm not gardening for details.

Karen

Random Tuesday

First, we have our usual garden fare:

I think I need more then 2 cucumbers to start pickling. Perhaps next year, more cucumber plants.


But I've got more then enough echinacea, if I ever get off my butt and start to use herbs medicinally. But it won't be this year - I am way too busy.


One Local Summer, almost:
This morning, I was, quite unusually, ready before the hubby and staring at my tomatoes and wondering how to use them all this summer. The idea of a tomato sandwich appealed. So quick like a bunny, I threw together bread, fresh from Angie's Kitchen (just around the corner from me and sold at the farmer's market down the road) and tomatoes (from my own garden) with margarine and a wee tiny bit of salt.

It occurred to me while I was making it that this mostly fit the criteria for a local meal, but I got all fussy in the head and didn't go and take a picture of it. After all, the margarine and salt aren't local.

But having had no breakfast, and being completely without will power, I just ate it for morning break at work and it was.... wonderful! I'll have the bagel I bought for breakfast for a late lunch instead.

Tomorrow maybe, I won't be so fussy about qualifications and take a picture in the morning.

Michfest:
This weekend, a friend and I are off to the Michigan Womyns' Music Festival, aka MichFest, for short. I'm one part excited as all get out, one part nervous of the drive, one part wanting to stay home (I'm a Cancer, we're homebodies), and one part starting to get tense about not being properly packed yet.

Conflict is us: I'm also an Aries moon - cardinal fire, and cardinal water (Cancer). So much fun. Ya know, assuming I put much stock in astrology and all...

New Rovings:
Mmmm mmmm! My but Wellington Fibres does a good job. And very very decently priced as well! I just got the Shetland fleece that I picked up in June (check the archives, apparently I don't have individual post links set up) back from the Mill and the rovings are beautiful!

I got so excited by the price, even before seeing the results, that I took them all the other fleece in the house as well when I went to pick it up. One bag of mystery fleece, and several bags of Icelandic fleeces.

The question of the day is: should I take the new rovings and a drop spindle to the Festival, or not? My decade old memory of the Festival says that would put me firmly in the 'wyrd' category. That is, despite the stilts, prom dresses, sarongs, and various leather accroutements that are all pretty normal festigear...

Karen

phooey

They've finally stopped playing with our street, but it won't be recovered in black top until October or therabouts because they have to finish digging up the rest of the town first.

There's a hole in the front yard where the new water cut-off valve is.

The snowball bush that was in the way has been run over twice. The theory is that it (why do I want to say 'she'?) will recover.

There's a very large swath of dirt where the engineer dug up the back yard to determine what kind of septic system he'd recommend.

That's only the beginning of course, because we still have to have someone trench from the house to the new water pipes and connect us, and actually have the septic system done (as opposed to just research and recommendation). So there's no real point in reseeding the lawn at this point. It'll just get dug up again in a month.

It started raining in the middle of the night and hasn't stopped yet.

And I had NOTHING to wear this morning.

Thank the many gods for Diana, who is also having a bad day. Shared misery and all...

More thanks to the Universe that it is friday, after all, and I can sleep in tomorrow.

And that my first beefsteak tomato came off the vine this morning. :)

Karen

Garden again, and eating locally

This little scarlet flax flower is compliments of Canadian Tire, free with purchase. While I had absolutely no expectation that they'd grow, if someone's going to give me free seeds, I'll probably find a place to plant them. :)


I haven't the foggiest what flower is - do you? It certainly doesn't belong to the tag that's behind it.


Close-up of the lavendar. It's such a pretty plant, and smells so good. I've heard you can cook with it, but that seems so strange to me.


I've been trying to join Pocket Farm's One Local Summer challenge, but I'm having the darnedest time finding the local meat suppliers. And we're not vegetarians.

Today's brunch was french toast and sausages. Only the bread was reliably local. The eggs, milk, cinnamon and sausages were all bought at the big chain grocery store so who knows where they came from? It's kind of frustrating.

But I did just find this set of pages for Eating Locally in Waterloo Region, so stay tuned. All it takes is a little more effort, right?

It's possible that I'm overthinking this too much. We got some steaks from a nice store just around the corner and they said the butcher is over in Guelph, but they didn't know where the cow came from. Probably not that far away but still... if I don't know, how can I claim it's local?

And of course, I am being my usual nitpicky self - I want to do a 100km radius just because we use the metric system up here in Canada and I can't even think in miles anymore. Given that y'all are using 100 mile radius in the USA, I'm making it even harder on myself. If we do the math, 100 km is approximately 62.14 miles. See why I don't want to remember some odd number?

It shouldn't be that hard, I'm smack in the middle of Foodland Ontario.

Fussy, fussy girl....

Karen

This is our street on drugs.

In a manner of speaking, of course...

A few days ago, they dropped this big monster of a thing off in front of our house.


These are the pipes that will go in the hole the big monster will dig.


This is what the end of our driveway looked like when we came home tonight.


It dwarfs the house. Heck, it even dwarfs the motherwort.


*sigh* And this is only the beginning of it. We need to replace the septic tank this year too, and there's some .... co-ordination required.

I'm lucky 'though.... the hubby does project management for a living. He actually likes to sort out difficult details and schedule things. It's one of those personality quirks that I completely don't understand about him, and adore.

Karen

still more from the garden

Lavendar and feverfew. Well, one of the many plants that are apparently called feverfew. I wonder if this is the right variety used for brewing a strong tea that can help ease headaches.



Closeup of the flowering parts of Motherwort. It's a stunningly tall plant at close to 7 feet in height! It's been an absolute delight to watch grow this year.



One of the newest additions to the garden. I don't know about where you folks live, but in this area of Ontario, 99% of the daylilies are orange or yellow. Very overused. Neil wants to acquire every other colour just to be different.

On the Merely Annoying Front: the powers-that-be are digging up my street to lay new pipes for the formerly private well that serves 1/3rd of the this small town. It's a long story but it starts with another small community, criminal stupidity and government overreaction and ends with each of the affected households in town paying out a miserable amount of money to have the Regional government take over running the well.

*sigh* Almost as much fun is the neighbourhood's overreaction to the project at the last minute, and trying to stop it. But it's underway now, and surprisingly, all hell has not broken loose. Gosh.

Karen

more from the garden

One of the many many daisies in the garden.



This is my front window.



Roman chamomille, golden marguerite, and alkanet. Both alkanet and golden marguerite are dye plants, giving grey/purple and yellow respectively.



Daisies in the front garden.

Two cherry tomatoes have ripened and so far, I've eaten both while standing over them in the garden. :)

Karen

Tomatoes, redux

So... what are y'all planning on doing with your bounty of tomatoes?

Me, I'm boring. I'll probably sauce the whole darn bunch and freeze them for pasta sauce. We eat a lot of pasta in this household.

But I'm open to new ideas and recipes for other ways to use them. I can almost taste now....

Karen

tomatos!

These are where my tomatoes are at - how are yours doing?

*tap tap tap*

Are they ready yet?

Karen :)

Happy Canada Day!