A Gift

My sister came to visit.  Along with her cute self, she brought me this spinning wheel.  I inherited this spinning wheel from Grammy, my grandmother, when she died four years ago.  This grandmother is not to be confused with svensto, my other grandmother, who is still alive and well and blogging at age 90.

Grammy lived to 90 as well.  She lived on her own, self-sufficient and driving until the very end.  All I ever saw her consume were Cheetos, rum and Coke, and Misty menthol lights.  When I lived in Santa Barbara and then San Francisco, I’d drive up to visit her in Sacramento.  We’d smoke and play cards and look at all her old photographs and tell eachother our most outrageous stories.

About a week before her 90th birthday, she had a stroke, and died a few days after her birthday.  Since I am selfish and honest, I did not go to see her with the rest of my extended family during her last week.  We spoke on the phone, but, since my brain works in pictures, I didn’t want to remember her strapped to a bed with tubes all over.  Selfish and honest, as I said, but I’ve never regretted my choice to stay in Wyoming as she died.  She was a rebel herself, she understood.

She left me this spinning wheel and all the old photographs we used to pour over.  The spinning wheel was her mother’s; Grammy didn’t even know how to use it.  It has been in a bag, in pieces, at my parents’ house for the last four years, but earlier this summer, my sister drove out to Seattle and picked it up for me while she was there, and then brought it with her when she came to visit.

This will be my winter project: learning to spin.
And this is Grammy, the James Dean of grandmothers:

my morning coffee

This is how I make my coffee these days.
Over an open fire, outside at dawn.
I sip to the sunrise.

pssst….

It’s been pretty quiet, here on this blog.

Sometimes I just can’t stand

being on this computer.

Sometimes I wish I could just send all of you

a handwritten note

a pressed flower

and a grasshopper leg.

The Awesome Ayate

Like so many, I’ve been making an effort to not buy plastics since once they’re here, they’re here to stay, and more often than not, to to ill effect.  When I started out with this intent a couple of years ago, I focused on the easy and obvious:  I only buy clothes made from natural fibers; I only buy synthetic fibers if they are used or vintage.  I store my food and leftovers in mason jars, not tupperware.  (Tip: wide mouth jars of all sizes are way easier to clean than jars with narrow mouths!)

Now, I’m noticing the less obvious places plastics show up.  The kitchen sponge, for example.  Recently, I decided I would not buy any more kitchen sponges and began racking my brain for a replacement.

Enter the ayate.  Ayate cloths are about the size of a washcloth, loosely woven from the fibers of the agave plant.  When they get wet, the fibers plump up and it becomes a dense, semi-abrasive, sturdy material.  I’ve been using an ayate cloth in the shower, as a skin exfoliator, since highschool.  And so it dawned on me to try an ayate on my dishes (a separate one, of course).  It’s fantastic!

The ayate cloth holds suds really well, it’s incredibly durable, and the texture cleans off crud without harming surfaces.  I’m very anal about cleaning the glass jars I store my Daisy milk in, and the ayate cloth works perfectly.  Perfectly!

You can find ayate cloths at most health food stores in the bath/body section, or you can order them online ~ an internet search for “ayate” brings up many sources/retailers.  Hurrah!

Got any eco tips to share?  Leave ‘em in the comment section!

Moth, Emerging

Last Friday was a profound day for me.  Intense, and intensely profound.  And each day since has been either one or the other.  The lack of details is not my being coy, but because I simply cannot share everything right now for various reasons.  But I can share this moth.

Last Friday evening, immediately following this bout of profundity, a crazzzzzzy windstorm blew up.  One moment, all was calm; the next, the sky was solid with whipped-up dust and trees were bending sideways.  And then, perhaps half an hour later, the wind was gone, and all was calm again.

I went outside, because I love to be outside just after a windstorm.  And I spotted this moth, clinging to a weed near the ground, next to one of my garden patches.  I knelt beside it, my head low to the ground, studying this incredible moth.  Its body was huge and fat, black and gray and yellow and white, about the size of my thumb but slightly longer.  Its face was awesome; it looked carnivorous, strong, and so incredibly graceful, its wings hanging behind it like a cape.

The moth swayed softly in the remaining breeze, clutching the weed, waiting for something.  Unhurried, unworried, secure in itself and waiting.  Then I saw the hole.  And now I must back up in this story-telling for a moment: Roughly seven weeks ago, I was weeding my garden and saw an enormous caterpillar amongst my watermelons.  It was a glossy bright green, larger than my thumb.  Huge!  I took two twigs as chopsticks and gently moved the massive ‘pillar to the dirt outside my garden plot, near a clump of weeds.  And then watched in awe as the caterpillar disappeared into the earth.  It started digging a hole with its nose and down into the dirt it went, disappearing completely.  The next day, I had forgotten about it.

Now, I noticed the hole in the ground near this magnificent moth.  A hole exactly the size of its body.  A hole where the strange caterpillar had disappeared.  I do believe it made its cocoon in the earth ~ or that perhaps the earth itself was the cocoon ~ and that this moth had just emerged.  And was waiting to fly.

Darkness crept in and I walked Daisy & Co to the corrals, and the next morning, the moth was gone.  Days passed; I wondered about the moth, wondered where it went.  I spent nights sitting outside, watching the silhouette of a bat swooping between my home and the stars every night.

This morning, I saw the moth again, clutching a large rock I have on my deck.  Resting again.  And this makes me wonder, perhaps it is not a bat visiting me every night, but is, in fact, this moth in flight.

UPDATE: The moth is Manduca quinquemaculatus, aka Five Spotted Hawk Moth.  More info HERE.  I noticed this morning that the “eyes” on its shoulder are actually three-dimensional and raised!  Thanks, Keitha, for the link!

UPDATE II: The moth is still sleeping (?) on the side of the big rock on my deck, but has been moving as the sun crosses the sky, to stay on the shady side of the rock!