Living in the Woods

July 11, 2008 - It's been two nights of tent living and... so far, so good. Here's our humble dwelling -

It's a two room tent, the first room is standing height and it's where we're keeping all our stuff. The back room is shorter, as it's the bedroom. We are borrowing this killer air mattress from my sister and her husband, so our bed actually does feel like a bed -

The whole thing is pretty big. I bought it at Sam's Club for $100. It's probably the cheapest tent of it's kind that I could have found. So far it hasn't leaked, and so far there have been no bugs in it. This makes us happy.

Then here's our screen tent, which we share with the daddy long legs.

There are certainly a few things that I can already tell are going to be annoying about living in a tent for 6 weeks.

1. Going to the bathroom in the night. This is so far the only thing about our living situation that has made me cry. It's truly terrifying to walk down the path to the port-a-potty at night by yourself, especially when your neighbors told you last week that they saw a bear a few weeks ago. Fortunately for me, since I'm the only one with this problem, Joe has plans for a big spotlighted walkway in the near future.

2. Having to unzip and rezip the tent everytime you need to get something. This makes you really appreciate doors. They're just so much easier to operate, ya know? We're being VERY careful about the zipping because we want NO bugs, but it gets irritating.

3. Trying not to get the inside of the tent dirty with your shoes. Especially when it's raining outside. Not easy. I bought some 'door' mats today to try to help with this problem.

4. Washing dishes. As of right now, it's a hike down to the water, and it's COLD water.

On a positive note - there are nice things about camping. The sound of the birds, experiencing the cool morning and night air, sitting in our screen tent watching the deer pass through, and of course, being alone for a change. And at the end of this, going back to my mother's house will feel like a dream come true.

Now for a garden update -

Our tomato plants are out of control. We are definitely not going to know what to do with them all when they start ripening. Here's the jungle - you can see that we planted them far too close together, because there's pretty much no way to harvest them without being swallowed alive -

And here's what's popping up all over the place -

Same with the zucchini - every day we go out there, we find a ton more that are ripe and ready to be eaten.

And now it's cucumber time. I just went outside and picked a bunch of these. I never knew that they were so prickly straight from the garden. Ouch.

These are ground cherries. I've never really seen them anywhere, but my dad used to grow them when I was a kid. They have these papery husks around them and they're these little delicious berries inside.

And then here's the corn, and the cabbage and beans.

Today Joe worked and I was off, so I used the day to do all my errands. I bought some solar showers so that we can hopefully start showering on the property. Even if we shower someplace else during the day, we often do work at night and wish we could have one before bed. Plus it will be cool to shower in the woods.

Also picked blueberries today with Axel, his friend, Elizabeth and Lorelai. Gotta love berry season. I don't think blueberries last very long, so you should go pick some too!