Funny little things

I have noticed a lot of funny little things since we arrived a month ago. Some are a little disappointing, but a number are interesting or quite nice.
    The first thing Nathanael and I did when we entered our apartment, was fill our water bottles and taste the water. For one thing we had been awake almost since we left Wisconsin, and had then spent the morning roaming campus because there were some computer glitches preventing his registration, and all of this worked up a pretty strong thirst. Also, we were both very curious as to what it would taste like. The result was more surprising than we expected. No chlorine. After having abandoned the glories of well water the moment I left home seven years ago, I was not expecting to stumble upon it in a city of over 200,000. And, not only is it devoid of chlorine, but instead of being flavorless it is slightly sweet. I have begun to enjoy the flavor very much, in fact. There is a third thing about the water, which I suppose I should have expected, but which took me utterly by surprise. I actually laughed at myself when I ran the water upon our arrival. The water is warm. No matter how long you run the tap marked with a C, it will always be cooler once you have left your glass full on the counter for a while. I wouldn't trade our water in, though; warmth beats chlorine by miles.
   Before we left Wisconsin, Nathanael and I had been discussing how products sold in the state/region/locality where they are produced should be less expensive since they do not demand as much transportation. Most products are not priced that way, and the example I used was Stoneyfield yogurt. All around the country the price hovers around $3.96, even when I was in graduate school in the same state and the CEO was our commencement speaker. However, now that we are here instead of in the dairy state, a gallon of milk ranges from $3.99 to $7.15. I am doing my best to refrain from complaining now that what I wish has come true (while I slowly use our $3/lb butter), and instead have been trying to find the things that are less expensive because they are locally produced. I don't have a super memory for the prices of non-dairy items, but it makes me smile that most of the rice in the grain aisle is produced in the town where Nathanael works at the rice research station. The farmer's market has been a source for vegetables at significantly less than grocery prices (which has not been true in other cities where I have lived), especially for pecans. Pecans! Those emblems of the South and its rich desserts. They were one of the products sparking my hopes of lower prices locally, and though the store shelves don't show it, the farmers market provides local pecans for a good bit less than $9/lb.
  My last surprise--for this post, though I certainly have more to share--was how much we miss our garden. For the first few days when we knew not what to cook I blamed it on our missing pans and silverware. Once they were unpacked I realized the difficulty was no longer having vegetables motivating our menu in large quantities. In two days we moved from 2 or 3 enormous zucchini a week, to one six inches long for $0.50. The effects on cooking are pretty dramatic.
    In Wisconsin, our garden is in the loving hands of Kristy and Paul, who have been creating all kinds of ways to enjoy the vegetables (even zucchini pancakes). We are so glad for their hard work and for the pictures they have sent us of the produce. Below is one of the pictures Kristy sent us, which I think is probably my favorite picture of vegetables, so far in life!

    
    In the on campus apartments, where most of the residents are international students, a number of the graduate students have their parents living with them. One older Chinese lady in particular is always outside with her tiny grandson, but every so often I noticed her walking back from the parking lot alone. One day I saw her huddled between the edge of the asphalt and the chain link fence, digging; which in the moments before my eyes glanced around made my brain think, "Secrets? Burried treasure? Small dead animals?" Then I saw the real reason. A garden bustling with produce. This determined little lady has turned a small strip of littered sand into beautiful thing. She has peppers, long skinny eggplant and the most enormous squash I have ever seen, which are draped over the fence and the plant still holds them up. I smile whenever I think about it.
     Now Nathanael says if he could find a place to keep a goat, he'd be happy staying here pretty much forever.

A New Space

 Over the weekend Nathanael built a bed for us. He did a wonderful job of confronting a problem needing to be solved (this one being our short supply of storage space), and not only making plans and starting the project, but also seeing it through.

Without holidays or deadlines to motivate me I have seldom had such drive with my handcrafts. There are bits of almost finished shirts, dresses, and pants in the sewing closets of My Mother, my sister Melissa and now also here with me. But Nathanael has measured, designed, sawed, sanded and worked ceaselessly so that less than five days after we purchased our mattress, we are able to slide our cooler, tent, and winter clothes neatly underneath it. Actually, most of our things probably could fit under there, because he gave it two feet of clearance.

   
 The apartment we are now renting has little in common with the one we were renting a few weeks ago. Instead of plaster walls and wood floors we now have painted cinder block walls and vinyl tile floors like a grocery store. But I am so glad for these features, which are well suited to the moist climate and the prevention of termites and mold. Unfortunately, we no longer have a spacious kitchen and an enormous pantry to store our canned food and dry goods, so I didn't really know what to do with all of those things in our new and smaller kitchen. [We even have one of those baby stoves!] Seeing that I was a little baffled by all of it, Nathanael told me he was up to the kitchen arranging task. He organized my spices, the tea, and then built a small retaining wall for the cookie sheets and cutting boards. And then, since our largest cabinet is the enormous, shelf-less one under the sink, he built a completely amazing canned good case.

The shelves of which I will not be lining with the mushroom contact paper we purchased from the intriguing man running an eclectic garden/hardware/machete shop, who assured us it will work perfectly despite having been in his store since 1970. He actually recommended using it to cover a piece of plywood, and prop the piece up on some cinder blocks, thereby creating an executive desk.
There is your frugal furniture ingenuity tip for the day.

(I can give you directions to plant world if you need any sythes, cast iron cookware, or fascinating stories)

Transported

Nathanael and I have relocated from the North to the South. From the dairy land to the land of sun showers. We have stayed in the same time zone, but apart from that most things have changed.
We probably let the move sneak up on us a bit, but I had realized from many consecutive years of packing up and moving that it will all take as much time as you give it. Therefore, I did not begin packing any boxes until the Monday before the Friday we moved. I cannot say that I regret this decision, because we had quite a bit of fun gardening and touring the city in those days that many other people would have been dealing with boxes and tape...but I cannot readily recommend it to you either. We went on a lovely walk in a marsh,

  
     which was home to mosquitoes that came up from the ground in flocks, adding kindly to the red spots that we had from an intense season of Ultimate Frisbee. We also window shopped our way down some of the city's streets lined with galleries, knitting shops and small grocery stores. But, at the time we needed to do our very best to avoid acquiring any more food. For over a month we had been trying to eat through canned and dried goods to reduce the food with which we were moving, but at the same time being bombarded with dinner and lunch invitations by fantastic people and harvesting exorbitant amounts of cucumbers, pumpkins, broccoli, beans and zucchini from our garden. (In the end a fairly sizable load of vegetables and part of the contents of our freezer ended up being sneaked onto friends' doorstep at about 3:30 am the morning we were leaving, but luckily they actually appreciated it.)
     Our garden has been taken over by friends, who we hope will have as much fun using and giving away the multitude of vegetables as we did. Unfortunately, we missed the ripening of our tomatoes by about 5 days, though the yield was promising to be enormous (we snatched a few green ones before we left). We will miss the tomatoes, refrigerator pickles and zinnias most of all.

    But despite the things we regret leaving behind (which sadly includes Nathanael's family), we are both excited by this new place and the people God has already placed in our path. Our move itself was rather an adventure, which included the use of ABF upack freight services. We determined this to be our most fuel conscious and cost effective option for moving so far. If you want to hear more of the fine details of our packing, hauling, and some tips read that story here. The short version is that God sent just the right people to help us fill the last boxes, meet our time constraints, and pack the trailer with us in the midst of a mosquito infested thunderstorm. [And they were even tall!]

  
   Our own drive south went smoothly, and included a cooler filled with cheese, the reading of Pride and Prejudice, incessant itching of mosquito bites, and (as we were retrieving our belongings) the exclamation of, "Oh look! A submarine!" from the mouth of Nathanael.

He was right.