Thank goodness for friends who are willing to come to your house and provide just that little bit of a necessary kick in the butt to get you moving. The D*’s came over yesterday and P* and DH pulled fence posts and hauled them over to the new place, and M* got me all fired up and motivated out of my weird emotional moving funk, and we got a ton of stuff loaded into her minivan. The house here is starting to get to the point of not being all that pleasant or comfortable to hang out in—-like Bernard said yesterday, if we can make it miserable to be here maybe we’ll move over there faster!

The goats are certainly doing their part to make everybody miserable—last night when we got home after dark from a potluck at Murray Branch, the horses were waiting in the driveway, and the goats were on the back porch, having eaten or destroyed everything they could reach. Houseplants were pulled out of their pots and eaten or broken, including a couple of fairly old and beautiful jades. Hostas, althaeas, roses, butterfly bushes—pretty much everything. We shooed the horses back into the pasture, and the goats back down to the barnyard, but it will be hard to keep everybody where they belong as we remove more and more fence posts. The fences that the loggers knocked down and didn’t replace aren’t helping matters either!

So my project for today is to move houseplants and any perennials that I want over to the new house—it’s good timing, too, as we have a couple of days of heavy rain forecast. Today, so far, is just drizzly—perfect for digging up plants.

And the goats are going to be locked in the barn while we’re gone.

The girls and I have taken carloads of stuff over to the new house the past two days, and, perhaps more importantly, have taken carloads of stuff out of the new house. There is still a lot of junk over there—DH takes a truckload to the dump every time he leaves! We’ll take a load of our things over today, and then go to a party at our new neighbors’ house—a welcome to the neighborhood party. Doesn’t that sound like fun? I think I’ll make a peach cobbler to take, seeing as how we have half of this basket of peaches left!

I’ve been collecting seeds from the four o’clocks every morning—only from the pink ones, and the ones with broken colors. There’s a chicken living in the yard who goes around collecting them every morning also—I try to beat her to them. I thought all parts of four o’clocks were poisonous—but evidently the seeds are ok for chickens; she’s been eating them for weeks now with no ill effects.

Yesterday morning we had an aftershock from the earthquake—a long, low groan from the depths of the earth. I was glad the girls got to hear/feel it, since they missed it the night before. They’re calling the quake the “hurriquake” because everybody in town keeps calling it the hurricane, and then has to correct themselves and say earthquake—can you tell which one we’re more accustomed to here?

Bernard and I have mild colds—probably from some combination of stress, exhaustion, dust and mold. I’m hitting the poke root and echinacea pretty hard—it looks like this one is going to stay mild.

Hey—happy birthday yesterday, Mom!

Last night at around 11:10pm, as DH and I were turning off lights and getting ready for bed, a low rumble started, quickly growing to a loud, deep, thundering sound, shaking the house. For some reason, I, who have never been in an earthquake before, knew exactly what it was, and I sprinted to the girls’ bedroom, leaping over boxes and other moving-related debris, with the idea that I should grab the girls and get them outside. In the meantime, DH decided that the big maple tree in the front yard was falling on the house, and he went out on the front porch, and stood looking at the tree, obviously confused that it was still standing. I’m in the back of the house, hissing in one of those whisper-yells, “Should I get the girls? Should I get the girls?” And then it was over. DH went in the girls’ room and told ED that we had maybe just had an earthquake, and she sleepily replied, “I seriously doubt it.”

But we really did—it registered 3.8 on the richter scale, and the epicenter was about two miles south of Hot Springs, or about eight miles north of us here.

Yesterday morning we all got up early and headed into A-ville to buy blueberries for ED’s birthday pie, and also to pick up her birthday presents. By the time we got back home we had a peck basket of peaches, seven pints of blueberries, a bag of green beans, a bag of new potatoes, two dozen ears of sweet corn, assorted grocery items, including two half gallons of ice cream, seven half-pints of cream, and two pounds of butter, half a dozen large cardboard boxes, a white-flowering wax begonia, a Blue Ray blueberry bush, a large oak-leaf hydrangea, an orange canna lily, a red hibiscus, and two good-size apple trees (red delicious and stayman winesap) in the Subaru with the four of us. It was a little tight.

I assembled pies at home while DH and the girls took a load of books over to the new house; I took the pies over there and baked them, and several good friends showed up to help eat them and the corn. It was a lovely day—ED had several blissed-out moments—and it felt like a nice kick-off for our new place. DH and I are both feeling a little overwhelmed emotionally—I think he may actually be glad to be back at work today!

ED was thrilled about her apple trees and blueberry bush. How cool is my daughter? I am so amazed and so happy to have a fourteen year old who thinks an apple tree is the best present ever. You’re a keeper, ED.

We did it! Everything went well yesterday, and we are now officially landowners. S* only pulled a couple of minor shenanigans, including taking off to run an errand during the closing—which we were able to complete without her—and we enjoyed meeting her brother R*, who seemed a little more mentally together than S*.

A champagne toast, and, later, dinner at the Inn; it was a great end to an exciting day.

Well, this is it—the big day. We’ve all been excited and overstimulated the last several days; DH didn’t sleep last night (he’s blaming the full moon); Bernard had an anxiety attack at two am night before last; and, ok, I’ll admit it—I’ve been a wreck. I’m not sure what I’m so freaked out about: that something will happen and the whole deal will fall through? Or that nothing will happen, and the whole deal won’t fall through! Silly me.

I walked this morning for the first time in a few days, and it did wonders for my state of mind. It was a gorgeous morning, too: all pink and gold with an electric blue setting moon, and the edges all softened with mist and autumn clematis. The ironweed is blooming now—it is the richest, deepest purple you can imagine—and my patch of jerusalem artichokes is covered with gold flowers. The pokeweed is glorious—I could imagine growing it as an ornamental with its berries like strands of green-shading-to-purple pearls.

So we are headed to Marshall this morning—got to go get homeowner’s insurance and get the power switched—and then the closing is at two. After that we’re off to buy birthday presents for ED—don’t say anything, but I think we’re going to buy her two or three apple trees, and Bernard wants to get her some sort of fruit-bearing bush; blueberry, maybe? ED says that getting a farm is the best birthday present ever—she has requested that we spend her birthday (tomorrow) cleaning out the new barn and eating blueberry pie. Sounds good to me!

The energy in our house is a little frantic right now. Fortunately, for me, the prevailing mood is excitement with only an occasional dash of terror; this is a nice reversal!

S* is up to her usual tricks—trying to renege on deals already made about things like the deep freeze, the wood cookstove, the full tank of heating oil. I think she had somebody haul off all the firewood that was in the woodshed! I don’t really get where she’s coming from; I am accustomed to a certain level of kindness and consideration in my dealings with people—otherwise I just don’t deal with them—and I’m finding myself confused by S*’s motives. DH is doing a great job handling her—yesterday he told her that we really didn’t need any of that stuff, and that she should go ahead and haul it all off, and she sputtered a while and then said she’d probably just leave it.

Things here are chaotic—half packed boxes everywhere—but it’s actually feeling great to go through all our junk and get rid of what we don’t need or want any longer. There are boxes upsairs that we never unpacked when we moved in here six years ago!

Yesterday DH and I racked off the locust flower mead—it has worked off much more slowly than the honeysuckle rose—and we finally got those last two pots of blackberry elderberry into carboys. How do you move a five gallon glass carboy full of wine, by the way? We have four of them! Plus we’d like to make at least one batch of Max Patch purpleberry mead before we move.

I love this time of year here in the mountains. The cicadas’ rattles arching up and up all day; the katydids at night; the autumn clematis—or virgin’s bower—everwhere looking like jasmine but smelling like privet, and the four o’clocks at night with their sweet-but-poisonous fragrance. Don’t you love how life is, all at the same time, sweet and frustrating, scary and exhilerating, hopeful and sad? All those things, all together.

Thanks for everything, I have no complaints.

We’ve been running around like the proverbial headless chicken, trying to deal with all that needs to be dealt with this week. We were finally able to pick up the appraisal yesterday (after a fruitless trip Monday in which we missed the appraiser’s office by minutes), and it looks like all is well on that front.

We are trying to absolutely minimize contact with S* (current owner), as everytime we have to deal with her we go into a tailspin of stress; she’s not proving to be all that trustworthy—going back on deals previously made, saying one thing, doing another, stuff like that. Nothing that’s really a big deal, but enough to be unnecessarily stressful.

So for now, until Monday, we’re just packing and freaking out over how much there is to do!