Looking back to Look forward.
Grand Rocks and Gardening
It’s June17th and we have been back in Seattle for almost 4 months and 367 days have passed since we embarked on our fantastic voyage.
In couple of months of being here, so much has shifted and settled in what feels like four blinks. We now reside with Rene’s best friend in the neighborhood of Magnolia, about 10minute drive north of the Space Needle. The early 1900’s house offers everything that were hoping for after being on the road for the better part of a year: quiet location with good access to basic needs, close to amazing parks, a back yard with established raised beds for gardening and Queso has two small furry friends to lounge with all day long.
The several of the raised beds were planted before the majority of boxes were unpacked. Even with the very cold and rainy spring we have enjoyed several rounds of radishes and eating more than our fill of lettuces. The gardening learning curve is still steep. We are doing our best to implement concepts from No Till Gardening/Regenerative gardening with some great success while starting produce from seed is still hit or miss.
Rene is fully immersed in his new career in clay and picking up speed. Rain City Clay held it’s grand opening in early April and has been making strides forward ever since. As a studio assistant, Rene helps with the behind the scenes tasks of a successful business and has started teaching an Intro to Wheel class as well. In addition to these commitments he’s working at Seattle Pottery Supply learning how to build kilns and continuing to carve out time for his own creative work.
Johanna is seeing clients three days a week at Rain City Integrative Clinic. Being a massage therapist at a clinic that is run by Naturopaths who were also LMT’s makes for easy communication and attracts people who are interested and open to the non-standard techniques employed for increased functionality and long term pain resolution. The office is located less than a 10min drive from the house and includes floor to ceiling views of Lake Union.
Grand Rocks and Painted Desert
Back on our road trip, it was the beginning of 2022 and we continued our tour of amazing rocks! We stopped by the Grand Canyon…it was grand… and then were graciously hosted in Flagstaff by Marianne (the daughter of mom’s close friend Deb), her husband Matt and their two young daughters. We had never met them before and they opened up space for sleeping and their kitchen to us. In addition to being parents, they are both working professionals and we tried to show our gratitude by preparing several meals (with leftovers) while we were there.
We enjoyed exploring around Flagstaff and touring a small evolving urban art project called the Painted Desert Project. It is a motel covered with graffiti murals by local indigenous artists. It’s mission statement: “he Painted Desert Project connects public artists with communities through mural opportunities on the Navajo Nation.” And the goal is definitely accomplished. Some of them are beautiful, some humorous, some thought provoking, all worth visiting.
our hosts’ generosity was extended even further when our plans had a sudden twist which we really didn't want.
On Jan 4th we were literally packed up and on the road to our next farm stay (and very excited about it). Following a gut hunch, I texted to clarify about co-vid protocols and status, just to be sure...
Turns out one of the hosts is meh about getting the jab and the other is anti to the point of fully believing that it's a full on bioweapon 😳😳😳, and they have no precautions/protocols in place.
Side note: it's in an area where cases and hospitalizations were rapidly increasing, and there would have been 4 other farm stay workers as well.
As being there would mean eating in close proximity with these folks for 2 weeks straight, we cancelled plans.
So, here we stayed in Flagstaff for several days longer than expected (and feeling overwhelmingly grateful we have a place to stay).
Sedona and Beyond
We also made our way south of Flagstaff to see the beautiful rocks of Sedona. The colors, canyons and sights were intoxicating and made us wish that we were staying in the area even longer.
Once again our stay seemed to short and before we knew it we were back on the road (for real this time) to Joshua Tree.
Thank you for reading along!
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