Adieu

Goodbye to Eric and Rebecca today. Off to Johnson City for Thanksgiving. A great couple who left their mark on Shambhala, on the garden, on the basement and on the coffee table!And before that, to Nikki, and her cats Timmy and Ajah. Nikky totally uncovered Awakening Words at the Peace Circle. By hand. A labor of love. It rose again from the weeds, like Smithson's Spiral Jetty from the Great Salt Lake. Art as renewed/ing event.

New trails

Calum will clear the way for the Kyoto Trail today. It passes by beautiful mossy rocks reminiscent of the moss gardens I saw in Kyoto, carefully tended by monks.  Walking meditation. Need to make a bench. Sitting meditation. Perhaps a bench long enough to curl up on. Dreaming meditation. Is there a common theme here? The moss seems to be cascading over the rocks. Note the attendant icicles.

November has seen a change in the weather. And with it:  pipes (to the cabin), Bob's fence-busting beefalo, escaping horses, garden produce all but ended (except some chard and other greens), and ladybugs invading the cottage and cabin in plague proportions. They are expecting to hibernate but when we turn on the heat they think its spring and reappear inside and out in huge numbers. Paying guests at the cottage just cancelled the whole month on arrival day and left. They are not the pretty things we English call ladybirds, but a more aggressive 'Asian' variety that will dive-bomb and bite, and have a nasty smelling yellow blood. They still eat aphids, but we're out of aphids right now. I used insecticidal bombs in desperation. They died in genocidal numbers, and then came back.

In the last weeks we have had four wwoofers. Nikki (from North Carolina, with cats Timmy and Asia), Eric and Rebecca (from California), and Calum (from England). We have been rotating cooking, and eating like kings. Shambhala now has a clean floor, and a retaining wall behind. I'm searching for a glass dome.The garden is clean and tidy, with a rye cover crop. The basement has been cleared and re-organised. And the Peace Circle's Awakening Words has now been revealed. Some parallel with Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty re-emerging when the water level dropped. Art as EVENT!! A fire-pit is happening on the runway towards the white tree. Terry is making a custom front door, probably in red oak.

Calum mowed around Lily's last sculpture (four blue balls nesting in a recumbent osage orange tree). 

See photos on her website @
http://lilyerbsculpture.tumblr.com/


Nudging DeeAnn to feed her horses hay and trim their hooves. Horse ownership ain't cheap.
Red (Houdini) escaped a few times until Eric and Rebecca and I fixed three real holes in the back fence. Got to meet my neighbors. Bad fences can make closer neighbors! Reminds me of the Chinese good luck story which starts out with horses escaping. Bad luck. But then the army recruiters come by and the son is off chasing the horses. Good luck! And so on.

Thanksgiving. Going with Hathaway to Gabby's (with Calum), and then to Chris and Heather in Nashville. Should leave a snack for our wild turkeys. 

Lily Erb is creating sculpture as an Artist in Residence, living in the cabin Sept/Oct 2013

205' x 13', painted steel (now yellow)

Catching Up

I have neglected this blog. So much has happened.
* "Flow" the movie
* Serious progress on Shambhala (meditation space made of cob)
* New shed to create storage and workshop space
* Fencing the sauna with bamboo to enable a white scented  goatproof garden
* Lots more work on the garden: raised beds, watering system
* Major efforts by wwoofers over Spring/Summer 2013
* Preliminary ground clearing and planning for pagoda in 'Japan' incorporating delapidated chimney
* Considering buying field next to pagoda, and maybe the old white house next door on Sunny Slope
* Booking first proper artist-in-residence for September
* Making word signs for Mots Trouvee trails
* Realizing I bought the original farm in October 2002. Scary the passage of time.

Some photos next time.

I feel so bloguilty. How can I have been blog-awol since August? Here's a list of stuff I should have written about: 1. Christina held a cob workshop that mostly built the walls for the central building in Shambala,

a meditation site on a pavement on the side of the hill above the barn overlooking the lake and pond.

2. Joe and Kathy finished the plumbing (water and gas) to the cabin so its almost done. Just needs a loo and heater.3. Joe and Randall completed the water supply to both cabin and sauna, with cut-offs etc. 4. Sharon and friend stayed in the cottage in exchange for some painting and cleaning. Alarm over toilet flush. Now it all works. 5. Stewie (wwoofer) mostly finished a bamboo fence around the sauna, with a torii gate. This is to keep the goats out and create a garden for plants.

6. Rebecca and Garret (wwoofers) laid a stone path and steps down from the sauna.

7. The garden supplied LOTS of great veggies. Esp chard, toms, beet, basil and arugula. Next year need that watering system in. 8. Crissy and Emily (Nashville spelunkers) explored the sinkhole by the meditation space.

9. We started on the Yellow Bird Wordscape, with

Datura stramonium (Locoweed, aka Jimson Weed)

"Scientific classification Kingdom: Plantae (unranked): Angiosperms (unranked): Eudicots (unranked): Asterids Order: Solanales Family: Solanaceae Genus: Datura Species: D. stramonium Binomial name Datura stramonium L. Synonyms Datura inermis Juss. ex Jacq. Datura stramonium var. chalybea W. D. J. Koch, nom. illeg. Datura stramonium var. tatula (L.) Torr. Datura tatula L.,[1] Datura stramonium, known by the common names Jimson weed or datura is a plant in the Solanaceae (nightshade) family, which is believed to have originated in the Americas, but is now found around the world.[1] For centuries, datura has been used as an herbal medicine to relieve asthma symptoms and as an analgesic during surgery or bonesetting. It is also a powerful hallucinogen and deliriant, which is used spiritually for the intense visions it produces. However the tropane alkaloids which are responsible for both the medicinal and hallucinogenic properties are fatally toxic in only slightly higher amounts than the medicinal dosage, and careless use often results in hospitalizations and deaths."

"Jamestown weed is known by many names: jimson weed, devil’s trumpet, devil’s weed, hell’s bells, locoweed, stinkweed, and pricklyburr are just a few. Its current name “jimson” is a contraction of “Jamestown”, where its history in the New World begins. What is Jamestown weed? This small, poisonous bush had long been used medicinally, criminally, and for recreational purposes throughout the world, long before the settlers at Jamestown came across it. It was used by thieves in India and Russia, where they used a mixture of ground up seeds and water to incapacitate and then rob their unsuspecting victims. A religious cult in India used it to murder people, and the plant was used as a poison in Renaissance Europe. Jamestown Weed’s Colorful Past Jamestown weed is not native to Virginia and is believed to have been brought in soil from the West Indies or Asia. It took hold there and settlers in the Jamestown area reported illness after consuming the leaves. Then in 1676, English soldiers were sent to Jamestown to squelch the Rebellion of Bacon. Apparently, Jamestown weed was boiled and added to a salad that the soldiers consumed. Whether this was accident or by design is unknown. However, the story was included in a book written by Robert Beverly in 1705. In his book, Beverly recounted that the soldiers presented “a very pleasant comedy, for they turned natural fools upon it for several days”. The soldiers were apparently suffering from hallucinations, disabling them completely from any part in the rebellion. It took 11 days for the soldiers to recover and they suffered from amnesia and remembered nothing about their time under the influence of the jimson weed. Jamestown weed has been used throughout history for all types of reasons: good and bad. But the story of the poisoned soldiers is certainly an interesting footnote in its colorful past. Jimson Weed, aka Jamestown Weed, is a popular art subject best known by the work of Georgia O’Keeffe. Jimson weed is admittedly to be admired for its beauty as well."

Datura stramonium here pictured behind the barn. Beautiful but deadly? Or on the edge? Text above from the web (Wikipedia plus).