Kindness of Strangers

I am in AWE today. All due to a stranger.

As most of you know Dorian and I have moved from glorious California to North Carolina to live with his brother Sean and Sean's Girlfriend Stacey.  We moved here not only to live with these two wonderful people but to start our own garden and perhaps infect a few people with the idea that growing your own food is an incredibly useful tool. (Not to mention delicious, rewarding, and way better for you!)

Now we have this glorious blank canvas of a garden that we get to have our way with. We decided to sheet mulch as much as we could. (find out more about sheet mulch here, or check out one of my new most favorite books Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture) Which means we need an absurd amount of cardboard/newspaper, straw, mulch and manure. As well as a boat load of lime as our pH test let us know our soil is 'very acid'.

 With our budget of $0 we were excited for the challenge of "materials reconnaissance" (OH MY! My spell checker just let me know by NOT putting the red line under that word that I have spelled it correctly (side note - I am a terrible speller and am incredibly pleased with myself)). We started out asking newspaper companies for old copies and ended up with a 1.5 foot stack. The local library informed us that they have an internal recycling system, which means sad face for us. But never fear treasure (abandoned boxes) was to be had! We didn't even have to dig it up it was just laying around the neighborhood so we picked it up when we were out walking (we also found a shovel that was a little broken but would still dig holes! Even after these victories we still need much, much more.

Haulin' a load in my truck!

Next step, straw. ( Which is really what this post is about.) We could have purchased them for around $5 a bale, but that isn't much fun now is it?  Right, so on many of our tours through our little maze of a community we had noticed that a few people had straw bales up for decorations! It being nearly Thanksgiving I had a inkling that perhaps these bales needed to be gotten rid of. Lucky them!  I knew just the people who wanted them! After ringing a few doorbells and leaving some notes we ended up with about seven bales. One of those people that was so kind to give us three bales (seen here in our "truck") even offered to ask her friend about getting more! So we gave her a call today, she had said perhaps her friend had seven bales that we could have. She not only brought seven plus two bales she had gone to her friends' house picked them up and delivered them to us FOR FREE! All from a woman we didn't even know. It was such a sweet thing she did, she even said she might have more for us! (sighing in awe and total gratitude, I think this is a little wink and smile from our friend Karma! you reap what you sow! (pun intended!))

Yeah he is that strong!

It's when things like this happen that remind me why Dorian and I are meant to be here. To share in the human experience.  The world is so full of kindness, consciousness and love; we all just have to remember it is in everyone.

Adjustments

Well, we have arrived in North Carolina from California. My friends at REI thought I was a bit crazy for moving here, and when we got here I completely agreed. Fayetteville is a military town, kinda dirty, full of dispair and mustangs (this has begun to become a joke, each trip out we see how many we can count, i think around 20 is the number to beat), and most certainly absolutely nothing like northern California. ...sigh..

When we finally got the courage to venture out of the house (Dorian and I are road warriors, we slept only a handful of hours on our trek and we were in no rush to get back in our cars!) we were frightened to say the least. Organic food was very hard to find while in Nor Cal you could trip and fall on organic food! All of the stores look pretty run down, and our neighborhood is a suburban labyrinth! Luckily Stacey (Dorian's brother Sean's girlfriend) has the low down and let us know that there is a grocery store resembling Publix nearby.  Harris Teeter! (really!? who came up with this name??) Who did have organic food and was a nice grocery store. (Food Lion=Scary Charlie C's even more so we hear....haven't been brave enough to enter yet...) 

The whole town seemed to be in a state of depression on first glance. So we gave it another go, we went out looking for a local seed store to check them out. We found it and the people were lovely and helpful we also ended up taking a detour through downtown proper and it was cute! We felt relief, we no longer had so much animosity for Fayetteville! Though the first week brought about many thoughts of why in the HELL did I leave CA for THIS? I knew in my heart this is what we need to do. After a few more adventures (in the next few blogs) we realized we may be able to cultivate a wonderful growing community after all, our neighbors are so close and so many!

The house we are staying in is very beautiful annnd....We have a HUGE backyard for our GARDEN and Sean and Stacey are so excited for all the fresh vegetables they are going to have!!!

My new business cards!

The title is really self explanatory... But yay! I spent around way too much time on these they better arrive as glorious as they look on my computer screen!

Cars are never too far from my lens!

This one's for Papa. He HAS to be the reason why every time I catch a glimpse of a shiny classic car my eyes lock on and I get a touch of tunnel vision. The glittering chrome and lollypop bright paint jobs definitely demand a snap from my camera!