Denise Domning's Blog, page 38
August 25, 2011
New Kittens, redux
Whoops.
I'm usually really good about telling boys from girls. Maybe it had something to do with how hard it was for Wilma to produce kitten #2, being breach and all.
Or maybe I was just wrong.
Willa isn't Willa, he's William. Two orange tabby males.
In front: William (Billy) not Willa
Poor Wilma. I was so hoping she'd get a daughter to keep her company the way Nona and Willow are constant partners. Instead, it's just boys. It makes me wonder if that third kitten that didn't make it was the girl.
Ah well, Burtie and Billy are doing fine.
August 16, 2011
New Kittens
Wilma, Willa and (Wil)Burtie
Wilma almost didn't make it. By 8 pm last night I was calling the vet. She's stopped her labor, was listless and not interested in little Burtie. The vet said it wasn't uncommon for cats to take 24 hours to have their kittens. So we waited. Neither Ed nor I got much sleep last night as we were both up and down checking on her. She was in and out of her box, leaving Burtie crying and cold. Very un-Mama catlike. So at precisely 8:04 am this morning, I called the vet and said, "It's fast approaching 24 hours and I think one's stuck." They had me come right in.
So off I went, Wilma's birthing box and Burtie on the seat, Wilma in the cat carrier on the floor. At the vet's office they hustled me into a room and checked Wilma. I greeted the vet with, "What do you think? Give her a shot of Pitocin?" I'd had Pitocin for 5 minutes while in the process of giving birth to Justin. It was all I needed. He took all of 1 hour and 45 minutes to be born. One of the nurses had warned me not to have a third child, because it was a sure thing the kid would be born on the kitchen floor. One labor pain and, whoops, there it is. Anyway, it was a joke, or so I thought.
The Doc and I agreed: two more kittens in Wilma that weren't coming out. After an x-ray that showed our guess was right–there were two kittens and one was sideways– and there was no anatomical reason for the kittens not making it out, the doctor came in with … you guessed it: Animal pitocin.
It didn't work for Wilma the way it did with me. She labored. One hour, then two. The baby would come halfway out, then retreat. The doctor finally gave her an assist, by reaching in and helping to guide the kitten out as Wilma pushed. The feet came first. That was the problem. Breech birth. After that the rest of the little white and orange tabby girl made her way into the world. She'll be long haired, and her name is Willa.
At that point I bundled them all up and headed home. We got here just as Wilma gave birth to the last kitten, dead, unfortunately but not surprising given that we'd past that crucial 24 hour mark and hour before. So, there are two and now Wilma is laying happily in her box nursing her babies. She has that look of contentment on her face that all new mothers get.
I guess we're just supposed to be a golden-haired cat family over here. Here's hoping the kittens turn out to be less house cats than their mother is!
August 15, 2011
August 15, 2011
Well, it's been quite a day. We have Men-ipulation live on Nook and Kindle, and I'm sitting in my closet as Wilma produces her kittens.
Wilma's first, Wilburt. He'll be Burtie.
So far Wilma's only given me one: a male orange tabby. I can feel there are still more inside her, but she doesn't seem to be in any hurry. She's off having a leisurely bite to eat and a quick drink of water. Meanwhile, I'm watching her son, Wilburt–Burtie for short–wander blindly over her birthing bed, looking for Mommy. Wilma sure doesn't have the focus that Willow had when she had her kittens. Four hours and she'd spit out five babies. This one's been working since early this morning and we only have one so far. Of course Willow had had a few litters before she came to live with us.
Men-ipulation's Cover
As for Men-ipulation, well the birthing process for that puppy was a whole lot longer. I can honestly say it was just as satisfying. Our first review was five stars.
Here's what the reviewer had to say:
In Men-ipulation, an unforgettable and moving true-life tale of sorrow and joy, "pulp nonfiction" meets a gritty love story of failure and success in this candid, courageous tale of addiction and recovery from a pasta heiress-by-marriage with a heroin habit and a heart of gold. From the drug neighborhoods of Kansas City to long stints in rehab to a dinner party on Senator Barry Goldwater's elegant patio to charity functions for underprivileged children in the Phoenix area, Monica Sarli has proved herself to be a survivor and a conqueror of adversity. She survived her drug addiction, her toxic friends, her husband's family's wealth, and her husband's penchant for getting them into hot water, so hot that they were offered a spot in the witness protection program in exchange for testimony against a dangerous drug kingpin whom they considered a friend. Readers will be appalled, aghast, and shaken by the drug world of a woman who loved without fear and never abandoned her husband, even though he dragged her down to the worst abysses of her entire life. Men-ipulation propels the reader on a reckless journey from inside a "shooting gallery" where her husband overdosed and nearly died that night (but for her bravery) to her recovery and her powerful presence in corporate boardrooms. Monica Sarli's life story is a loud warning cry against hard drugs, a rally to love one another unconditionally, and a resounding triumph of the human spirit. Brava to Denise Domning, an adept and insightful chronicler of Mrs. Sarli's life story, and brava to Monica Sarli, for telling it like it is, fearlessly. I was riveted, heartbroken, and amazed. This memoir packs a wallop. Without apology, Men-ipulation is the naked confession of a life gone wrong but a love gone right. Five stars. – Eve Paludan, author of three editions of The Romance Writer's Pink Pages, Letters from David, and Taking Back Tara.
It's available through Amazon and for on Barnes and Noble. I'm still working on getting the iBook version to appear on iTunes.
So, it looks like I'm going to have to chase down Wilma and get her back here to take care of her new baby!
August 10, 2011
Five days to book launch
Five days to book launch and I'm exhausted. This is the first time I've worn all the hats: author, editor, copy editor, book designer and typesetter.
Here's where the book launch preparations are now:
The website is almost functional. If only we could have started soon, but we didn't have our brand until Monica had her brainstorm for The Men Wars. This is just one of those "it had to be this way" chores. The most important thing for me is that the links to buy the books be so blazingly clear that even the least tech-savvy user can find it. I also had to go on exclamation point control. This is a real sticking point for me, maybe because I got my hand slapped early and often in my writing career over exclamation point usage. Nowadays, I drive down the road and see one, two, three exclamation points in a row to tell me how special their widget is. To me, the more exclamation points I see the more I wonder how mediocre the product is. If it can't sell itself on its own merits, there must be something wrong.
The manuscript is as clean as I can make it in the time allotted. I hate finding errors in books, especially my own. I'd use a copy editor if I knew a really good one. Thank heavens I've had a little experience with publishing. Having done this eleven times before, I know what to look for, which means I'm checking questionable words, hyphenations and such in my friend Google. Sigh. I love Google. As far as the look and feel of the Createspace book, I originally chose Bookman Old Style (a serif font). I like a serif font in a book. However, Amber tells me that serifs are too busy for old eyes. Since I have old eyes, I relented and went with good old Verdana.
I now hate Word even more than I did when I started this project. Why does it insist in putting in 10 spaces for an indent instead of 5? I'm a Word Perfect girl, but the whole rest of the world wants everything in a stupid Word doc. Manuscript formatting doesn't always transfer well, so I'm using Word. Why does Word make it so hard to format a header or footer? Why can't you manage them without creating new sections (if only I could figure out how to do that!) or have every gol-darn page reformat because you made a change?
Note for future books: do not ask supposedly-Word proficient husband for help. Ed hates any version of Windows above XP. He snatched my laptop away after I had a meltdown when Word once again refused to let me do what Word Perfect makes easy. Then he sat there and stared at the screen for half an hour, trying to figure out the buttons on the tool bar. I finally asked him how to create either a new section for the header and he looked atme with a completely blank expression. I snatched back my laptop. ARGH! I don't have time for this!
An online "how to create a book for Createspace" blog suggested that I didn't want to learn Adobe inDesign, at which point I perked up. I have that program. Even better, Amber actually uses that program. I bundled the manuscript up and sent it to her.
Then made a bunch of changes. Of course.
By the way, when she sent me the draft pdf the indents were again set at 10 spaces instead of the 5 I want. When did the world start using that standard?
I'm finally panicking over legal liabilities, such as someone suing us for libel or slander over being mentioned in the book, so I contacted a lawyer. We're going to talk on Friday. This is an issue I wouldn't have needed to address on my own if we'd sold the book to New York, but at least I thought of it. I'm waiting with bated breath to hear what she says. Thinking about it sent me back through the manuscript to take out anything that needed a trademark (the little circle with the R) . No Kleenix, Little Doughboy, Q-tips allowed.
And I sent Amber another manuscript.
The final version (as of last night) is now fully formatted for both Kindle and eBooks. All that I need now are the pictures Monica wants to include and hasn't yet gotten to me. I'm still wondering how I'll preview the Nook and iBook version. Hmm, maybe I can use the Nook and iPad we bought for contest prizes?
Which brings me to our contest. Our big prizes are a Kindle, Nook and iPad. The iPad will be given out after our Facebook likes reach 25,000. What do you think? Too high? I hope not. We're also giving out Monica calendars, signed copies of the book, Amazon/B&N/iStore gift cards and such.
Here's the big question: is the book good enough to warrant this much money being thrown at it? I haven't heard back from our first reviewer, so I don't know.
Monica's the glamorous one
Remember, we've also hired a national PR agent to get Monica on radio. We've also got PR packages being assembled to be sent out to anyone and everyone (to be determined sometime between now and August 15). The PR package creation resulted in a demand that I get a new photo taken. Oh yuck. Who cares about me, anyway? It's all about Monica right now and that's just fine.What a crap shoot! Only five days to launch date and I have no clue if this is actually going to get finished on time.
August 2, 2011
First Eggs
So, Gigi, Annie and Zebra had a lovely first day in their new home. I stopped by at about 4 to see how things were. They were out eating grass and bugs, so I checked the nest boxes, not really thinking they'd be comfortable enough yet to offer eggs.
Their First Eggs for Me
They were.
At last, a coop!
The Cadillac of all Chicken Coops
August 1, 2011 it happened. The coop that Ed has been building since the beginning of May, the coop that he's lavished amazing time and money on (I'm thinking he's up to $1000 on it), is finally finished and made its way via Al's lawnmower from the barn to the orchard.
Mind you it was supposed to have happened on May 31, 2011, but better late than never, right? I guess. I lost the whole summer of eggs. And it's going to take a whole bunch of eggs to make back the cost of the windows he put in that coop. Ah well, he had fun.
And as usual, he over built. Now I didn't know this until we came home from Sedona with our chickens. I'd found them on Craig's list. Three chickens plus all their equipment for $100 dollars. That's kind of expensive for chickens, but it turned out the equipment included a 48 pound bag of diatomaceous earth, a big bag of corn, two large garbage cans for keeping feed in, a feeder and a electric water dispenser. Never mind that we have no access to electricity in the orchard. But the house Stardust (yes, that's her name and she has a killer smile with jewels fixed to her teeth) and her partner are living in is going into foreclosure; she wanted Gigi, Annie and Zebra to have a new home before they had to leave. Feeling like it was a good cause, we bought the package.
We'd brought 3 cat carriers with us to take them home in. One by one each chicken made it into a carrier, got strapped into the back of Ed's truck. (The look of disgust on his face was priceless when I suggested they travel in the cab with us.) We got home just as the storm hit. So there I am unloading chickens, garbage cans, etc from the back of the truck while Ed dashes into the barn to finish the coop's front gate. He hadn't expected me to find chickens the same day as he moved the coop. He underestimated me, big time.
I put the cat carriers into the coop under the second story nesting/roosting area, set their water and food in place (I'm going to have to figure out how to hang that food dispenser pretty quick), then dashed through the rain to the bales of straw under the willow. Loading the wheelbarrow with more than half a bale, I dash back down through the rain and go to the back of the coop. The whole back of the second story area opens for removing eggs.
The rain is pelting me. Lightning is striking. Thunder rolls across the hills around us, echoing down the canyon.
The latches for the door are so tight I can barely turn them. At last they open. I start to lift the door.
Holy crap! It weighs (I'm not exaggerating) forty pounds!
The rain is still pelting. The lightning is still striking all around me, and the thunder is still rolling.
Grunting in exertion, I lift the door to parallel with the joint ASSUMING (you know assume, right? makes an ass of u and me?) that once I have it in that position it will lock in place.
No-o-o-o-o, not at all. That's when I notice a brass cup meant to take the end of a pole. What pole?!
See above for pelting rain etc.
There it is, a piece of PVC piping leaning against the fence. All I have to do is balance the forty pound door on my head and put the pole in place to hold it up while I fill the nesting boxes with straw.
I'm not tall enough. The pole won't go in place and hold. Now I lift it as high as I can with one arm (okay, I admit it; I'm cursing by now) and maneuver that pole in place. Five minutes later it's finally bracing the door open.
Well, no raccoon is ever going to open that box, that's for dang sure.
With a thick layer of straw in place I go back through the rain and climb under the ladder to open the cat carriers. Within minutes the new girls are out and exploring their new home. Come sunset, they find their way up into the nesting boxes–Ed hasn't put the roosting bars high enough, so they're roosting in the highest nesting boxes, which doesn't really matter with only three birds.
This morning, the cats and I walked down to the orchard. I went in, closing the gate behind me, which startled the blondes. Walter's just following them, not really paying that much attention. I open the door and wait. The girls don't come down. Stardust has told me she's trained these girls to come for treats by making a clucking sound. I find one plum left on the plum tree–I didn't get a harvest this year; the birds took everything that the wind didn't blow off when it was blooming–and make that sound, offering them bits of plum down the ladder. Sure enough a few minutes later and they're exploring the orchard, scratching happily, and we have Cat TV big time. Nona is stalking the edges of the orchard, slinking around and around. Webster is a cat in the grass, his tail twitching. Walter's a doofus and doesn't notice. Mama Willow has obviously seen chickens before and pays not attention.
Later this morning Terry, our blue heron flew over making his/her usual racket. The girls dashed back to their coop and started complaining up to me on the porch. Ah, so they know to look up, and where to go if it scares them!
This will be a good practice start to me raising chickens, I think. That is if I can get that door open to get the eggs out of those nesting boxes.
Watch the Great Chicken Tractor tractoring into the orchard:
July 23, 2011
The Men Wars, kinda on the march
So today I bought our contest gifts: an iPad, a Kindle and a Nook. But of course we're giving away the mechanism with which to read our book. I've also made sure we've got the links for the site that will take people to the computer apps that allow them to read eBooks.
After I did that I spent a very frustrating several hours trying to figure out how to get our eBook into the hands of reviewers. No, I do not want to buy your book to learn how to do it. Not that said book wouldn't be incredibly informative. No, I do not want to join your newsletter list so I can get your amazing words of wisdom about publishing, which I'm sure will be most illuminating. It's s just that you'll send my your words to me on a daily basis and my inbox is already overflowing with other people's words of wisdom (most of which I don't ready anyway).
What I want is my local library and the reference librarian. That's' how I'm used to doing my research. The Web is just too crowded with repetitive information and I spend way too much time sifting through the dross trying to find that one gold nugget that might make it all worthwhile.
What I need is a list of reviewers who will look at a hard-edged, in-your-face memoir published in eBook format. It needs to be a long list because I know how many will really read this book…a handful if I'm lucky.
What I'm supposed to be doing right now is writing the final chapter. In only sixteen to twenty pages this project will be officially finished. The edits are done. The cover is in process. The interior art work still needs to be done, but I don't need that until I'm finally coding the book into XHTML. I have the ISBN number, including a widget for "See Inside", which I have yet to figure out.
The copyright is almost filed—it's just waiting for the finished manuscript to be uploaded. Now, that was an experience. Leave it to the government to turn a simple on-line process into a chore. Its GUI (guided user interface) system is not well guided and definitely not user-friendly. It kind of looks like the program my son wrote for his graduation project from DeVry, not that Justin's program wasn't amazing. It did get him his first programming job with Ping. But it had this same "hey, it works" look to it. Then again, it only costs $35 to file for the copyright on line, so I guess in this case I'm getting what I pay for.
Ack! Back to work on that last chapter. And we still haven't heard back from Annie Jennings. I'm afraid this will be a no-go with her. But without her, how in the world are we going to get onto Howard Stern?
The Men Wars, the next step
Well, the snail marches on. That's publishing, even when you're doing it on your own. Everything just takes so lo-o-o-o-ng.
Men Wars website
Now that the photo shoot is done and Monica is the only bona fide troop in The Men Wars it's up to our web and graphic arts guru, Amber Anderson to create our "Brand" for the new website, TheMenWars.com (not yet viable but coming soon.) Here's her proposal for the splash page of the website.
Meanwhile, we had a talk with our agent Katie Kotchman of the Denise Marcil and Don Congdon Literary Agencies. Katie's been our biggest supporter on our new endeavor. She's believed in this project from the moment she read the first nineteen pages I sent; she's very much looking forward to seeing the book(s) in print. She laughed when we told her we'd renamed the first book, which is a little more than half the book she was originally pitching, to Men-ipulation. She laughed harder when we told her the name of the second book, the last third plus more of the original book: Men-sturbation. It fits, this second book being the chronicle of Monica skirting sex addiction. I'm thanking Katie here again for all her time and effort on our behalf and hoping that in the near future she'll once again be pitching our successful e-book for New York to print.
But that may not happen. I've been hemming and hawing over the possibility of creating a print copy of the book. You can't do book signings on a Kindle, Nook or iPad.
That was one issue that came out of our conversation with Annie Jennings of Annie Jennings PR and Book Promotion. Although it was a positive conversation and we'd like to go forward with her—that is, if Annie's comfortable with the tenor of the book, which I forwarded to her—Annie made sure to warn us that PR doesn't always translate into book sales. I already knew that from my own experiences with PR. I've also learned that the best way to get people to buy your book is to hand them one. Once they're holding it they rarely let it go.
One thing's for certain, as I said in my last post. If we're going to print books it won't be through iUniverse. So, I guess I'm going back to the web for more research.
To keep myself from thinking about this too much I've decided it's time to put out a teaser book for Men-ipulation. I want to launch two chapters free for the Kindle, Nook and iBooks.
By the way I found it fairly easy to create an epub book for Nook using Sigil, Google's free epub conversion program. Once I converted the html files for Winter's Heat into xhtml (a save-as function in dreamweaver), the hardest part was breaking my single large book file into chapters and making sure they stayed in order when I inputted them into Sigil. Nook appears to require the ncx file that Kindle makes optional, but since I'd already written one for the Kindle I just moved it into Winter's Heat's Nook directory and Sigil found it. After that it was on to Lulu.com, which is an official aggregator for iBooks. Lo and behold! All I had to do was upload the epub file from Nook. Well, that and navigate their really stupid "make your cover" interface. Like, how about some clearly written instructions on how to use an existing image for the cover? Hmm, I wonder if the missing instructions has to do with the link at the bottom of the page to their graphic arts depart, which will happily create a cover for you?
Back to The Men Wars teaser book. In that two or three chapter book I'll link to our The Men Wars website, which Amber will have up and ready to take "reservations" for the book.
Meanwhile, I still have that last chapter to finish now that the edits are done on the rest of the book. And my nails to gnaw.
Why I haven't been posting lately
If you don't know, for the past five years I've been working on a memoir. Not mine. Monica Sarli's. For the last year and a half as she and I twiddled our thumbs, that book made the rounds of publishers in New York, hoping to find a home. Rejection after rejection came in, none of them commenting on the quality of the writing, although there were some that rejected it because I was the writer, that it wasn't Monica's words. (Trust me, they're Monica's words. I save "fuck" for really angry moments. I'm just the plot charter and grammarian.) Most of the rejections were because Monica's not famous.
Monica Sarli
Yet. Take a look at the proposed cover art. That's a woman who ought to be famous.
That's when I informed Monica we were going to publish it ourselves as an e-book. This isn't a decision I would have made a year ago, but a year ago I still believed in the idea of a New York publisher. I'm not so sure my belief is well founded anymore.
Kindle and Amazon have changed everything, something I'm late coming to realize.
After years of promising to bring out my novels for the Kindle I finally got around to doing it—on my own. (Click here for links to the books I've got available on Kindle right now.) You know, I just wasn't willing to share that 70% royalty Kindle was offering, so doing it myself was the way I was determined to go. I was astounded at how easy it really was…okay, for me. I spent a few years working at web design, so coding the books myself into html/xhtml format was pretty simple although plenty tedious. Much to my amazement my Kindle books started selling immediately. A hundred dollars a month royalty isn't much but it's a heck of a lot more than those books were earning for me over the last few years. And each month that number climbs.
At the same time I also used the "Back In Print" program through Authors' Guild to bring the first five books out in print through iUniverse. I will not be repeating that experience with the other books and not only because the books they create are freaking expensive. Not only did iUniverse get the covers wrong on two of the books, they actually blamed me for not getting them the covers and/or changes when it wasn't me who fell down on the job. And, I was just looking at one of the books they got right only to discover they forgot to put the proper image release on the copyright page. Their work is sloppy and slow, but I was overwhelmed with my real life, things like our move from Scottsdale up here to the farm, so I let it go. I'm sure as heck not spending any money with iUniverse for promotion, not if this is the way they handle their projects.
If my already positive experience with eBooks wasn't enough to convince me, the other day I was speaking with a friend who just happens to be the sort of author that consistently hits the Times. She had heard from someone high up that the publishing world as I've known it is doomed with maybe six more years before they're going to have to either change or die, and those big guys don't much like changing.
That was it. Monica and I sat down, looked at our project, divided the book up into smaller parts and created her new memoir series: The Men Wars. The first book, which we intend—I'm writing as fast as I can—to have out August 15th, is entitled Men-ipulation.
We're not going into this on a hope and a prayer, plugging it into Kindle and waiting. We're going to use the marketing and PR plan we had to develop for our non-fiction proposal.
Did you know that all non-fiction books require what is for all intents and purposes a business plan in order to be submitted to New York? I didn't before I started this project, but I sure do now. I've written it and written it and written it.
So, instead of doing our PR in tandem with a publishing house's marketing plan we're going to be suiting ourselves. A new website is being planned. Social media contests are in the works. The big prizes? Why, e-book readers, what else?
If this one fails, it fails because she doesn't have the story or I don't have the talent to make this fly.
I don't believe that and neither does she.
Now you know why I haven't been posting on the blog lately. I'm consumed with both finishing the first book–one more chapter left!, and marketing and promotion. So for the next couple of months, I'll be writing about our experiences in self-publishing along with updates on farm like…like Ed's $1000 chicken coop which STILL isn't finished.
Wish me luck!
Mandalas and Gardens
Kathy's plant art made from flowers. Click on the picture to see her site
A few weeks back I made a new friend up here and it happened in the happiest place on earth for me: a plant nursery. I'd taken off from home for New Frontiers (Frontiers, not Horizons…I can't quite get that straight)our Whole Foods look-alike in Sedona. But, before I left I googled plant nurseries in Sedona just in case–I visit a lot of nurseries just in case–and discovered that Biddles Nursery was right across the road from New Frontiers. Now that's too good to be true. Now every time I go grocery shopping I'll be stopping at the nursery as well. Danger, Will Robinson!
So I'm strolling around the nursery, then come across two tables of heirloom tomatoes. Excitement quickens. Can it possibly be? Will there be a speckled/striped Roman hiding in there? If you haven't had the pleasure of eating a speckled Roman tomato, you haven't lived. They're paste tomatoes but the flavor is an amazing full tomato flavor with a buttery aftertaste that's to die for. Eating a pasta sauce made from those tomatoes is heaven for sure. So I poke through the plants and, because my eyes are old and I'm wearing my not-for-reading glasses (three pairs of glasses, that's what it takes for me to view my world these days: close, mid-distance, far…ugh), so I can't read the names on the plant stakes. Off I go into the shop where I ask the clerk if she knows if there are any Romans in the batch.
"Oh," she says, "the lady who grows those tomatoes is here. That's her daughter out there," she points to a beautiful young teen girl loading plants into the back of a van. "Go ask her where her mother Kathy is."
I do and Kathy turns out to be in the greenhouse. I walk into the house and a woman dressed in a white batiste off the shoulder peasant blouse trimmed in pretty lace over a white batiste skirt and pantaloons.
Oooh, I like her already.
She's harvesting chard in the greenhouse, which it turns out Kathy has rented to grow her own family's vegetables. I ask about the Romans and she comes to life, well even more life, because Kathy's one of those people who exude life like sparkles from a Roman Candle. Not only does she have Striped Romans, she has Roman Icicles. I haven't heard of these, but they're apparently my tasty Romans in colors: black, blue, green. Kathy leads me back to the heirloom table and starts putting plants in my arms. Before long I'm carrying nine tomatoes and we've moved from talking basic gardening to sustainable agriculture, which she and her partner Dan have been working on doing since they bought their property in Cornville five years ago.
Okay, here's where it starts to get woo-woo. They live in an Earthship down at the other end of Cornville. Then one of us mentions something yoga-ish and we eye each other. "Do you practice?" I ask. "I'm a teacher," Kathy says. "Do you know Kat Puralewski?"
I laugh. "My first yoga classes at AtOne were with Kat. Do you know Jordan and Martin Kirk?" I ask. Of course she does. She's taken Anusara Yoga training with them. Before much longer I'm buying my new tomatoes (at a discount) and we're making plans to stop at my house on the way back to Cornville. It turns out that Dan is a contractor who specializes in green building.
Like I said, kind of woo-woo. We do our shopping then everyone converges here, where they survey our fields and assure me that we have really great ground. It's not the sand it feels like but very fine clay. Great, that means I now know I'll need to be working in lots of organic matter. More chickens needed.
Dan's definitely interested in the job, but now it's my turn to go to their place because…I want to see their Earthship. I've only ever seen them on-line. I want to know what it is I gave up on to keep this house. So off we caravan down to Cornville Road, onto Loy Road, where we pass two Earthships on the right, then onto Sugarloaf Road.
Goathead burrs...they sting, too
It doesn't look like our area over at that end of Cornville. It's dry and desert-looking with plenty of open ground covered in the awful plants that grow even more awful burrs. We turn off onto their drive, pass their new orchard, and I park near what will be the new greenhouse, one that will have a stove where Dan can grow tropicals. He has his sites set on palm trees and mangoes.
We pass the straw-bale meditation hut, then walk the path that leads down to their Earthship. The walk is lined in low-water use perennials, just like I used to grow in Scottsdale before I put in food plants, along with herbs. Lavender stands four feet high. Bright yellow-orange gallardia daisies nod at me as the breeze blows. Dan has taken rebar and bent it into flowing, graceful shapes and placed these into the flower beds. I'm beyond charmed. I want this garden!
As I turn toward the door for the Earthship I see a half-built structure that's made from e-crete. I stop stock still and look at Dan. "My husband so wants to meet you," I tell him. Dan can't possibly get how enamored Ed is with e-crete. (In fact, when I take Ed to visit a few weeks later he leaves with his own block of e-crete and puts it in a prominent place in the barn.) The Earthship is beautifully cool but small and old. It was on the property when they bought it. There's just one big room with a wood stove in the middle-back. Curtains separate the spaces. Dan has remodeled their bathroom, which had once been smaller than a boat's head (same shower/sink set up from what Dan tells me and if you've ever been on a sailboat smaller than 50 feet you know just how tiny that set up is), putting in a very nice sink and tiled shower. This, however, resulted in exposing the tires that make up the Earthship's walls.
Hmm, I'm thinking keeping the house we've got isn't such a bad idea after all.
Then it's on to their garden, where Dan has done exactly what I want to do: he's created a mandala garden. The walls curl around the space. Inside the space is cool, the ground thick and moist with mulch. This small space plays host to raspberries, elderberries, service berries, Russian olives, fruit trees along with the usual vegie garden stuff. It's marvelous!
Oh, I'm definitely liking these people. I think we've found our contractor.
It's our
