I've learned that there are always little gifts whenever big scary things happen.

This time, one of them is that I finally got the clothes line I've been longing for for years. I used to want it for "green" reasons; now I need it for financial reasons. Either way, it is a great feeling to know that the wind and the sun are doing something that used to require fossil fuel to accomplish.

The added bonus is that I've found it to be a completely Zen experience to be out in the yard listening to the late-summer crickets and frogs while taking the freshly washed and dried laundry down from the line after the kids have gone to bed.

I wonder what the gift will be that comes out of our latest challenge: a broken washing machine...

I'm still spending much of my time in the kitchen. I haven't quite gotten the rhythm of planning and cooking down to a science yet. Things need to be taken out of the freezer and thawed a couple days ahead of time or soaked for hours in kefir or whey. Harvesting and using or preserving the small amount that I have here in the kitchen garden is overwhelming...I wonder how I'll do it all next year when I'm planning to grow what we've been getting in our CSA boxes this summer.

I ate a few blackberries off of our new bush tonight while I was watering. All of this sure is a lot of work...

But so worth it.