It’s here. Yesterday’s snow did not stick. Today’s snow looks like it will stick. Less rain today and more snow. We had some last minute pre-winter tasks to complete; for example, I had to harvest the last of the tomatoes, which were in the hoop house. Two buckets worth are still green. They’ll ripen and Pete will make salsa out of them.

Pete also harvested some of the peaches off the peach tree. They appear ripe on the outside, but They are hard to the touch. If we’d gotten just a week more of sunshine, we would have had peaches. Imagine that.

Alys's cabin under snow

I have always wanted to grow bananas and lemons. I keep imagining us having an enclosed patio off the front part of the kitchen – one with steps leading to the open area. There I’d have my lemon trees. This would be a major building project for Pete, further committing us to continue to live here.

One foot of mine is out the door, and another will follow suit if our new neighbors down the road have power brought in. This happens, our area would change radically. There would be more people living here and driving on the road. The roads would be paved. And there would be considerably more light pollution.

But I’m not going there until this comes to be. However, my right foot is tapping the ground and my left foot is thinking about following suit.

The entire Mat-Su Valley is growing fast. There is no such thing as responsible development. Men love to build, and put in roads, and tear up the landscape. And the more uneducated men you have on hand, the greater the damage.

I went to town early today, thinking that I’d be home early. Didn’t happen. I arrived at the Meeting House before Pete – I moved books around and set out tomorrow’s books for cleaning. When Pete arrived, we unloaded the Saturday VCRS haul in the front church area. Then we went to our friend Alex’s and removed the books that Milena had put there last spring. Then we went to U-Haul and put them in Milena’s U-Haul storage unit. The books were hardbacks, and extremely heavy.

I spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out with Milena and her daughter – Milena picked out books for distribution. By the time she was done, it was 5 p.m. I drove home in the rain/snow mix.

We are now working on having a local builder construct us a building. All we need is $55,000 – a drop in the bucket for us these days. If all goes the way we’d like it to go, we could have a building in place in a month.

To hope or not to hope, that is the question. I guess that I hope when I want something really bad, but it, like the ring on the carousel, is out of reach. It’s simply human nature.

Snow is quiet when it falls, rain less so. Easier to see the manure when I clean the enclosure late at night.

Next: 279. 10/11/22: Hello Winter