Riona Abhainn

It's May Time:
I finally have the living room in as good of order as I realistically expect it to be in, which means I can finally get serious about hosting things here.  My plan is to do a house concert once a month in the first half of the month, and a permacultury/barter circly gathering each month in the second half of the month.  I'll be starting with the latter, near the end of May, haven't sorted the date yet.

Continuing to busk at various locations and sing on fb live.  If you've got facebook and live in OR or WA, feel encouraged to send me a friend request on there.

I decided to explore zero waste for my kitchen dish soap for the sink, bought both the reuseable bottle with pump and filled it up with soap at the Mama and Hapa's Zero Waste Shop here in Milwaukie, I think we want to do some things this way going forward, we want to add deodorant next, but some things I realistically won't be able to handle doing this way because of the way my schizoaffective disorder works, I get freaked out about shampoo and laundry detergent so I need the ones that are sealed when I buy them.  But I wanted to at least work on being less waste even if I can't be zero waste, we have to start where we can start.

They've been saying its coming back for so many years.  I don't believe them.  And quite frankly, given how lame the comicbooks were in the Leaves on the Wind series they did about 10 years ago I don't trust them to do Firefly right.  Its 14 episodes of pristine television, which didn't get a chance to get boring or poorly written since it was short lived, we've all seen shows that start out perfect and get stupid in season 5 or whatever.  It is one of my very favourite shows.

Welcome to permies Kaldaus, I think the people you seek might be here.

Tereza in Portland we had, possibly still have?, stationary checkers/chess boards in the main square downtown, but now adays a lot of people are hesitant to hang around down there, because even though its out in the open things are pretty lawless, tents and stuff, people ODing etc.  It was getting a bit better for a while (finally) but now its sliding again.  Back in my 20s everyone would visit and congregate there, glad where you live people still do.

Its May:
And we've had our first 90+ degree day.  This is a normal time to have the first one, May or June, once back in 2014 we had some 90+ days in late Apr. that's the earliest I recall.  Anyways I love 70s and 80s, 90s+ are hotter than I like but I try to be adaptible.

Well it seems like for everything that does well in my garden there are 2 things that don't.  I've begun harvesting my radishes and we're enjoying them in salads.  My potatoes are coming along well, I finally figured out how to grow microgreen peas without them going raunch.  And my new slug trap already has one successful kill (casserole dish with pbr beer, the internet says slugs like its extra yeastiness).
But my lettuce and spinich failed because the seeds are too old, my second container of radishes is rather abismal so far and my 5 year plumtree, inspite of it being the second year it flowered, doesn't have any fruit setting.  The mason bees I rented failed, I guess they're duds, I mean my very dear friend up north in WA has a thriving colony she rented from the same place, you keep them for the season, they hatch and do their thing and then you send the eggs back in their mud hole structure.  But mine were somehow duds.  I'm hoping the leafcutter bees which are due to hatch next month out of their block will fair better but quite frankly I don't have a lot of hope, I think I'm just not cut out for bees.

I ground up all the egg shells I have been saving and spread them on where I'm about to go out and plant my pepper seeds.  Last year peppers didn't work out, neither the bell pepper seeds from produce or the havaneros from my MIL's post harvest seedsaving.  My motto is that I try most everything twice in my garden, which will include these pepper seeds one more time.
I quardened off an area on the southside in the sideyard and planted my mini-white pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds directly into the earth, I hope the lawn person that the landlord has come around will stay outta there, string and stakes.  I'm also about to transplant my liatris plants, they grow but then they don't flower and just die.  I think they need a deeper container.

Being more proactive about coffeegrounds on the blueberry plant and the garlic.  

This looks like an incredible oppertunity for the right people!

Its so fun when hens lay colourful eggs.  I hope you end up with happy pear trees that make lots of pears.

Speaking of anvils, our goal for my husband starting in autumn is to figure out a mobile blacksmithing set up for out in our driveway.  A goal from last colder season that never happened.

Thanks for your miticulous detailing of the project for all of us to follow.  Such a cool idea!

The advantage to a phased plan like this is that you can save up chunks of money and do each thing, land, utilities, house, etc. each time you save enough money up for it.  Obviously land with a finished house is more spendy than land without one so this makes sense.