"The water came in a 30 year cycle. There would be five to six wet and wonderful years when there might be 19- 25 inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then there would come six to seven pretty good years, with 12 - 16 inches of rain. And then the dry years would come..."
John Steinbeck, "East of Eden"
Steinbeck summed it up pretty accurately, and so here we are in the midst of one wet and wonderful year, with the only detractor being that with so many dry years in a row before this, the land is scarcely capable of holding all this water.
Dry creeks filled with drought-killed trees are flooding for the first time in years and carrying the debris downstream. Sinkholes of formerly parched earth are opening up underneath the streets in southern California and swallowing cars whole, and 40 year-old trees are finding that even harder than surviving the droughts, surviving the deluge that comes after the drought is even more impossible.
And so it is in my neighborhood. Yesterday we had an astonishing 15 inches of rain on our hilltop, thanks to three micro-bursts which caused literal walls of water to fall around us. 50 mph wind gusts took out five of the neighbor's trees, narrowly missing our property.
The community effort which occurred immediately after these tree falls was nothing short of amazing; in less than 15 minutes there were at least 10 neighbors, half with chainsaws, hacking off branches, stacking logs and clearing the road. It was heartening to see, and made me realize what a wonderful neighborhood we live in.
But as a result of so many trees in the area coming down, we also lost power for about 12 hours on a very chilly and windy day. I sent Big Ag a text with one word: GENERATOR. We've been bickering over the last several years about whether or not we needed one, and thankfully (or not) Mother Nature saw to it that a combination of necessity and comfort won this argument.
So that night, we cooked dinner indoors, had a lamp on and ran our pellet stove until we were warm and our bellies full. I am as proud of that new generator as I would be of a Mercedes -- prouder even, because it's much more practical for where we live and we'll probably have it longer than we have any car we currently own.
Today the power is back on and the cleanup has begun all over the state as we slog our way through this "wet and wonderful" year, ever mindful that too much water is still preferable over not enough. We'll take the downed trees, flooding and power outages over endless sunshine any day of the year. Because just like Steinbeck points out, the dry years are always coming.
Just not today.
Big Ag and I were out in the backyard yesterday when he picked up the fruit from one of our landscape trees next to the house, pulled out his pocket knife, and cut it open in order to identify it. Having no idea what it was, he handed it to me. Knowing that the lady who had this place landscaped had pets, and therefore being fairly certain she hadn't planted anything toxic back there, I took a bite. It had the texture of an apple, but with an apple-pineapple-peachy kind of flavor to it. It was ripe, sweet, and absolutely delicious, and I couldn't believe I'd been sweeping all this fruit into the trash before this, believing it to be the inedible product of a tree grown only for show.
After some internet investigation, I determined it was a pineapple guava, or feijoa plant. Native to South America, it's able to be grown in our climate. I love discovering something new that's edible in our yard, especially when it's something I had just written off as a particularly messy landscape tree.
Everyone has at least one task involving manual labor that they love, often irrationally. Homesteaders usually eschew machines for many of their household tasks, but they still have some manual-labor chores that are more loved than others. Mine is raking leaves. Unless they're stuck in the mulch, I can usually tidy up a yard with a rake much faster than I could with one of those annoying leaf blowers. When I use the rake, I can still hear the birds sing. I burn some calories. And I use no gasoline or oil, and make no air pollution whatsoever. Plus there's a certain zen to gently clearing the ground of leaves on a cold fall or winter afternoon and sweeping them into a pile.
Often when I drive into town I see the gardeners with gasoline packs strapped onto their backs, blowing (more often than not) dirt off the sidewalk, or leaves out of the dirt. Sometimes I want to hand them a rake and a broom, and show them how much more efficient these tools really are. And I can't really believe that lugging around a gasoline backpack and waving a heavy plastic hose -- plus wearing a face mask and ear plugs all day long -- is either saving labor or making the tasks more pleasurable. Plus, what's the point of working as a gardener if you can't even spend your days listening to the birds sing?
Now that our trees are smaller and trimmed up nicely, there is a lot more sunshine and breezes in the back yard. This means on nice days I can use my absolute favorite appliance -- my solar clothes dryer, a.k.a. the clothes line. This sounds pathetically commonplace until you realize how few people dry any of their clothes outside anymore. Some suburban HOAs even have rules against using them, claiming it makes the neighborhood look too "ghetto" (this is not how they say it, but c'mon, you know it's what they mean). The average electric indoor clothes dryer is one of the biggest energy hogs in a household, second only to the television and air conditioner. And when you're drying clothes for a family of five like I do, that adds up to a lot of kilowatt hours. Seriously, go outside (to wherever your electric meter is) sometime and then have someone inside start the dryer. The little energy use wheel on your meter will begin whirling around faster than an over-caffeinated spin aerobics instructor. If we weren't moving soon I'd definitely be looking into solar panels, but for now we'll take Mr. Sun's warming rays for all we can, using what we currently have.
When the tree crew started trimming the cottonwoods yesterday, I couldn't help but notice all the buds on the branches that were coming down. I learned how to make healing cottonwood salve from the folks over at the Simple Green Frugal Co-Op ( http://simple-green-frugal-co-op.blogspot.com/ ) so I thought I'd take advantage of nature's bounty and make up another batch.
Cottonwood salve is simply put, the best thing I've ever used for wounds of all kinds -- punctures, cat scratches, burns, and rashes. I've also heard it's a great rub for sore muscles, but have not used it for this purpose yet. The cottonwood bud has an active ingredient that has antibacterial and well as anti-inflammatory properties.
Here's what the buds look like:
And once I put one cup of them into a quart mason jar with some good olive oil, they look like this:
You can make the salve immediately if you heat up the buds and the oil together on the stove, but the buds contain a very sticky resin (the active ingredient) that's almost impossible to get off the bottom of the saucepan once you're done, so I wouldn't recommend it. It's easier to just add the buds to some room temperature olive oil, seal tightly with a lid, and let it rest in a dark place for a couple of months, occasionally turning the jar to help mix the ingredients. Then when you're ready, strain off the buds and use the oil, or if you wish, heat the olive oil on the stovetop, add some beeswax (maybe a teaspoon or so) to give it a slightly more firm consistency and pour it into some smaller jars you probably have laying around. The tiny jelly jars made by Ball are great for this. It should stay good for up to a year, maybe longer.
