west Virginia 3

Palestine West Virginia Sept 22, 2009

Every year our cabin becomes more of a home, in it's physical growth and also in our relationship to the community that we are building in. Bertie at the Reedy grocery store remembers us quicker, our friendships to the people we've met here through Tom deepens and we develop our own relationships. It's harder to spend only 2 months here, we've come to really care for people and for the land. Sitting here on the porch in the morning listening to birds, watching with Suki for critter movements ( right now it's lots of squirrels with mouths fat with nuts running eveywhere stocking up for winter ) We're coming onto the month before any serious cold nights and everyone is building sheds, chopping wood, making plans. It's been a long time since Dan or I have lived in winter. For us, winter means the work season, tourists arrive and the work trickles to us, directly and indirectly.
This year I will be doing a concert at The Studios of Key West, a wonderful space run by and containing the work of many artists and concerts. And I will be finishing, at last, the CD I started 2 years ago when we closed the Riviera Drive location of Private Ear Studio. This year I look forward to reconnecting with my jazz roots and singing with guitar, which is how I first started singing. Also in the guitar vocal music I get to share making music with a new collaborator Rob O Connell. Also I get to keep some of the Spanish repertoire going, just with different accompaniment. I have added some Piazzolla and Montsalvatge to my new CD, the rhumba and milongo seems to fit the eclectic songlist of that CD and I've always been drawn to and included Latin rhythmns in all my jazz performances. Perhaps this will also be the year I make the leap from understanding and speaking some Spanish, to really learning it, I'm so close and can use it daily in Key West if I choose.
Many differences this year in our cabin. The biggest change is that we wrapped the porch around the side of the house and have lifted the kitchen off the ground and added a roof for it. That added a 20 x 10 foot space to our place and because it's roofed, instead of tarped down to the ground, it is dry and has much more light. We've put our parrot party lights up there and it is confusing the hummingbirds who think the red ones should contain sugar water for them and they buzz me looking for me to fill them! Those little birds are small but pure muscle and very forceful. I hesitate to feed anyone ( but our human friends ) here as we are only here 2 months and I don't want them dependent on us. I truly wish we could adopt a cat though . Now that Tom is down to one happy cat at his place across the holler, we've been finding a lot of mice around. They especially like shredding toilet paper and if keep gettting into the bathhouse and starting nests. They will nest in anything, last time it was a ziploc bag , resourceful but filthy little cuties. We've had to resort to mice traps. One of the facts of life of living in the woods here.
With our porch wrapped around we have added a good deal of space and been able to move the table and chairs for dining into the kitchen area. With the cooking station and table it looks like a little cafe and has been affectionately named Melody's Wildflower Bistro. Thanks to Tammy's generous donation of a full size refrigerator and Buck's experience of using a grill as an oven for inspiration, I have a very sweet set up. Also another big change , a few weeks ago Dan built me a pantry closet. The kitchen is open air, but protected and now I will be able to pack up all the plates and cooking utensils, cleaning supplies in the pantry. We have now officially unpacked all the plastic tubs except the one with camping supplies, which we store under the house when we are here. It will make coming and going much, much easier. And because I have 5 shelves and a door that closes , I don't have a 6 foot table stacked with tubs and dishes. It's much neater and also opens up 4 feet of space. I would love to put a banquet or church pew with some storage under it in the future. Have to be careful not to build critter housing, but it's possible.
For more about the bistro and adventures in cooking open air, I've written a bistro blog with some photos.