Summer notes

So western Oregon is in that transition between spring and summer right now. Temps are mostly mild, and we've had a few little rain showers here and there that have helped keep things green.

This was taken at 3:45 am the other morning. Short nights here!

One thing we're having a hard time adjusting to is the length of the night. This part of Oregon sits at about 44 degrees north latitude, like parts of Minnesota, which means our nights are short this time of year. Sunset/rise seem to be at fairly normal times (9 pm and 5:30 am, respectively) but there is a lingering twilight/dawn that lasts a few hours on either end that has made sleeping eight hours a challenge. At the same time, getting up to close a window at 4 am gives a peak at the beginnings of a two-hour sunrise, which is very cool.

But you want to hear something else cool? The latitude of the Willamette Valley also sits on a parallel with Provence, France. So those tall pine trees and fields of tall grass Van Gogh painted also appear in our landscape. Vincent would feel right at home here. 

The girls are finally out of their enclosure and free-ranging for part of the day, which lifts my heart and probably also the nutritional content of the eggs they lay, so that's good.

Just don't crap on the chaise lounge.

I am kind of surprised how much my mood has changed since living here. It seems I'm just consistently in a mellow, congenial kind of attitude, with almost no angst at all. I've realized that's because through most of my adult life I've always hated summer; hated when it started early and stole from spring, hated when it was in its triple digit height from about July through mid-October, and especially hated when it wiped out autumn entirely. That's a lot of hatred and, hence, the angst. 

And the  brush fire danger has gone away, too. I recently took down the three-part list I had posted on the fridge with what to gather up in a wildfire evacuation if you have 5/30/120 minutes to pack. There will be wildfires in Oregon this summer, to be sure, but probably not where we live. 

A Van Gogh kind of summer

Back before we moved here I used to wonder what I'd miss about California, and the answer is nothing...except the people we left. Luckily we've had no less than four friends come to see us since we moved, and more are on the way. Some are just visiting, and others are looking at possible relocations themselves. Either way, it's nice to see familiar faces in new places!

Sleep -- Nature's First Homeopathic Remedy

So on New Year's Eve, I started feeling puny about 10 pm or so., while driving home from a party we'd gone to at a coworker's house.  Thinking it was something I ate, I went to bed and suffered from an upset stomach all night, which left me tossing and turning until morning, at which point I felt even worse than before.

So needless to say, New Year's Day was not fun for me.  And realizing that, I took to my bed -- first from 11 am until about 1 pm that day, and then again at 7 :30 pm until 8:30 am the following day.  For those of you keeping track, that means I slept approximately 15 hours within a 24 hour period.  And, not surprisingly, I awoke yesterday feeling like the walking wounded -- still not 100 percent, but leagues better than I had been the day before.  I was even able to go into work, and found my energy had returned to about 100 percent of normal by noon.

In our modern society, where we are always going, going, going, we lament illnesses not so much as alarming physical symptoms that mean the wonderful machine known as our body is fighting off some kind of microscopic invader, but rather as inconveniences, impediments from going to work, from accomplishing, and from doing ever more.

And because of that, we miss out on nature's most powerful restorative, that of sleep.  Sleep, where the body quiets and our immune system can fight, unhindered by stress.  Sleep, where damaged cells are rejuvenated, and where the body lies still enough to heal.

We don't like sleep much in our society, in fact, get a group of hard workers together and it often turns into a brag-fest about how little sleep each one thinks they need each night.  But, ultimately, I think lack of sleep results in nothing but illness, both short and long-term.  And especially when we're ill, I think the worst thing we can do is take some kind of pill to enable ourselves to keep going when our body is telling us, in clear and simple language, that we just need to STOP.

So my advice to my homesteading friends who are going to suffer from colds or flu this year is this:  Get your farm chores done (or better yet, have someone do them for you), go inside the house, tuck yourself into bed and sleep.  Just sleep.  Let your body manage your healing the way it best knows how to do.

Because somewhere deep down inside you, as you snuggle under the covers and fall into the exhausted sleep we only get when we're truly ill, your body will fight the good fight and you will awake,  weak but healing, slightly drained but on the path to restoration.  

Sleep is the best medicine, and is truly the first homeopathic remedy, used for as long as mankind has been mankind.

Menopause, Sleep and Country Livin'

When I started trudging into that murky minefield known as peri-menopause, I was just planning on never sleeping well again. The onset of menopause was simply the current issue at the top of a very long list of things that I thought had kept me sleeping badly for years. I had an Ambien prescription for use after I'd had a couple of bad nights' sleep and needed some guaranteed zzz's, and I'd developed a variety of coping mechanisms to deal with my time spent on the Night Watch, even when there was nothing that needed watching.

I had always given excuses to my insomnia, even before I had the very legitimate excuse of coming into menopause, where lack of hormones play havoc with women's sleep cycles. (Ever wondered why middle aged women can be so short-tempered and grumpy sometimes?  You can get that way after years of no sleep.) But my insomnia excuses had started much earlier.  First, it was because I was just a light sleeper.  Then, because I was a new mother.  Then came the aforementioned peri-menopause, followed by menopause itself.  

The first night we moved into this new house, I slept with the shutters and windows thrown wide open.  I don't think I slept much, but that wasn't the point. (And I was used to that by this time anyway.) From the vantage point of my bed, I could see the Milky Way galaxy stretched in a line before me, rotating slowly as the night progressed.  I could see Antares, Scorpius and Sagittarius hanging low in the window.  If I looked towards the hills there were mighty oak trees, standing silent and silhouetted against the dry brush.

And so began my love affair for sleeping with the bedroom window open.  And after I became somewhat used to the idea that I could see a billion or so stars out of my window, I slept.  Well.  Extremely well, in fact.

This was a banner occasion for a long-time insomniac.  

It wasn't the peace and quiet, because as anyone who lives in the country can tell you, it's really not all that quiet out here -- day or night.  At night there are screech owls, coyotes, neighbor's dogs, the occasional car, and the dawn chorus beginning at around 4:30 a.m.  Nights are anything but silent.  

No, the sleep issue resolved itself once I finally started sleeping with the windows open and my room got cool -- downright cold, in fact.  I had no idea, but lowering the room temperature is the biggest thing most people can do to improve their sleep.  Studies indicate that a temperature range between 55 and 65 degrees is best for sleeping humans.  Yet how many of us who live in urban areas and cannot open our windows at night, or live in hot areas where it doesn't cool off to those temperatures at all in summer?  I know when I lived in the San Joaquin Valley, it was not uncommon on summer nights to find the temperatures hovering around 90 degrees at midnight, after a triple-digit day.  But that was only in the cities, where the concrete from the streets and sidewalks created a "heat island" effect from all those man-made structures still radiating the day's heat, long after sundown. 

Creating heat islands is just one more way we've over-civilized ourselves into a situation that's detrimental to our health and that of the environment.  After all, if you live in a heat island, you will probably do whatever it takes to cool off, like running your air conditioner all night long. Who could blame you? But that's not wise for either your electric bill or the health of the planet.

But since sleeping in the cool night air is something our bodies are biologically programmed to do, there's no getting around it.

We need sleep, and we need to sleep someplace cool.  Both things are just part of the basic operating instructions for owning a human body.

Here's a good NY Times article about this very subject:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/health/04real.html?_r=0

Early Night

Seed catalogs, the new issue of Hobby Farm, the old issue of Mother Earth News, and the novel, "Cloud Atlas" are all calling me to an early bedtime tonight.  I'm so exhausted I'm not sure how much time I will spend with any of these things before sliding into unconsciousness, but my rest will be well-earned and much appreciated tonight, I'm telling you.

Perhaps post-menopausal sleep troubles are only a product of our modern society.  If my middle-aged female peers and I worked as hard as I did today, every day, I'm pretty sure solid sleep would be a guaranteed thing.  Sometimes your body is just so tired you don't have a choice.  And so it is tonight.  I am immune to hormones and age, and a warm bed in a cool room are calling me.  Until tomorrow dawns bright and sunny, goodnight, friends.