i don’t know what it is, but every time, taking the ferry home, there is this joy. the sea moving beneath us, behind us. the way home. the community all around. it is a moving island of home. it is part of it all.

on the last passage home, there were humpbacks. the ferry crew shut the engines off and we drifted. there is always so much. thank you thank you thank you.

what’s been happening: the family left for a big long adventure out east, so we saw them off two weeks ago. before that rune and i did the dishes together and i just got such a kick out of how mature and capable this two-and-a-half year old is. i am pretty certain i didn’t even try to do dishes until i was five. and he is just so careful with the dishes while still being efficient!

food keeps coming in from the garden and needs tending to. one evening, between visiting with friends and eating dinner, we scrubbed the fruit fly rot from a harvest of walnuts. lists are getting made and sometimes things are getting crossed off. two weekends in a row we have managed to spend at least a little bit of time mushroom foraging. of the edible mushrooms, we found shaggy parasols, prince (it was right by the woodshed), cauliflower, violet cort, western varnished conk and a few oysters. we also found a huge collection of jumbo gyms, neither of us knew what they were so we gathered a bunch in the hopes that they were edible, because they looked SO GOOD. unfortunately they were not.

with johns help we’ve plastic’ed all the bus windows, attached another solar panel to my array (which carson so kindly gave to me), cleaned and put away the canoe, and got a myriad of smaller things done. i still want to get some garlic in the ground before winter (which means hauling soil up to the garden bed!) and figure out the roof for the cistern, which is turning into a bigger project than i intended, because john is having ideas. the newest one is to tear down the old shack and make the cistern roof longer to have a big outdoor covered area. i am on board with this, but it means tearing down the shack before the new roof is built, which is quite the project. exciting but daunting. it’s been awhile since i have made such decisions with someone else, and it takes some adjusting to. i am used to flying solo on almost all building projects, as is john, so it’s kind of funny. neither of us delegates well, as we tend to just go ahead and do what needs doing. it’s definitely an interesting mix of it being nice to let someone else take responsibility for things, while letting go of my fierce independence just a little.

it’s been sunny for over a week straight now, and of all things i am getting a pretty serious tan. it’s mid-october! (in the northern hemisphere)