I read a title to a post the other day, and without reading the actual post, the title just fits where we are at these days: When the dream comes true but the reality is slow and ugly.
I mean, wow. So fitting. Not in any particular way I can describe, but
it is exactly how I am feeling about our present. Although of course I
might use different/stronger language to describe the reality than 'slow
and ugly'. (stupid and stressful? irritating and heartbreaking? you get
the point!)
Regardless, we are moving on from the
fires and the debris flows/floods. Moving on from the bummer summer.
Moving into fall, keeping our fingers crossed for light gentle fall
rains, for a snowpack that doesn't melt all at once, for spring regrowth
that quickly starts holding the soil together. Looking forward to snow
and the peace and calm and quiet that falling snow lends to our landscape.
We
haven't decided what to do with the gardens yet. The lower garden got
scraped off, but I couldn't bear to put the energy into it to rake, hang
fences back up, and seed a fall cover crop. I just didn't want to sink
myself back into it not knowing what even the rest of the fall would
look like. Not knowing if we would decide to start a garden elsewhere
(but where?) next spring, or wait a year to see if the majority of the
debris/dirt/rocks were down from that chute. The side garden we will
likely keep going next summer. It is big enough that apart from the soil
being much poorer than what the lower garden had, and the weed bank
being MUCH larger, we should be able to plant everything we want in it.
It
is funny, initially when we started the side garden, I imagined letting
the lower garden go back to grass, to pasture, so maybe this will end
up happening after all. After all, the side garden is much easier to
defend from future debris flows, compared to the lower garden, where
defending means putting up a berm to keep the debris flow material on
our neighbors property, where the flow originated from. They aren't the
friendliest of neighbors even now, and I imagine that could send them
over the edge into certifiably crazy.
And if we do
pigs (currently dependent upon the irrigation for our little valley
being repaired which isn't looking all that good) next summer they will
be on the east side of the property, about where we had the pig the
first year. They are just too smelly to have in the garden, beside the
play structure. Besides, we have plans down the road to have a little
patio type area in the garden, which definitely means no smelly pigs
along side! We'll just have to haul the manure across every fall I
expect, which is quite worth it to have the smell and the flies on the
downwind side (most of the year) of the house.
Anyway, that is our little update here!
