It is not easy to take a photo of an LED light at night. I took about 50 of them to try to get a good one of the LED light that George (the Kayaker) gifted to me when we met by chance up on 14 highway on the day of the odyssey.
It casts a great light and actually runs all night long every night so I now have a night light which is really very cool.
The chance meeting with sweet George provided me with enough information about how these lights work that I feel pretty comfortable taking them apart now. I also started to put together the solar panels that I purchased a few weeks ago. A little at a time and very cautiously…
Here is the best of all the bad photos. Where can I find a good photographer when I need one?
Thanks again George it is a great gift for a Tiny House woman like myself.
I was up around Toronto yesterday morning and I am happy to report that the vegetation in that area is looking downright lush again. Here in the Kingston area, I think we must have had significantly less precipitation to carry us through. There has been rain, as a matter of fact, it is raining today. Even so, I think this is too late, we have lost a lot of forest here and I also think that it is way too late for most farmers because the root system is dead on so much. The balance of need was not met.
We have a few red tomatoes in the THO garden but sadly this is because they are dry rotted on the bottom. The Zero mile diet has been 99% flop. I know I will find that the balance here was also thrown off, it will have been an expensive year at THO when I finally do the books this fall.
I am lucky that I have more than one option still and am really pretty happy that I put in a back up garden in Hamilton and this is doing really well. I have had a number of meals from there already and also I have frozen one huge bag of tomatoes and my potatoes and herbs look really great. While I was there I put away some Niagara freestone peaches too. I think I will reap a lot of food from Hamilton considering particularly that I have only about 30 square feet of space to grow in at the house. Still, I feel terrible for my farming friends in this area whose books will be red with the loss.
Back here at THO, here is some rain on what is left of the ant tree. I would like to put a bird bath up on that post, one with a drain, so I am hoping I can find something which fits here easily. I am in town now to post this and also to get two 2×4 boards for a small project. I will write about what I am doing when it is accomplished.
I am not sure why I am so drastically disorganized this year. Today, for example, I went to the Pagan Festival in Kingston in front of City Hall, except I was a week early. I hope I can remember to go again next week when it is really on. I want to see the Norse sword work.
There was nothing lost because, the day is gorgeous here in the Kingston area and it is just nice to sit around the house both in and outside with my dogs.
I had to read a draft for a fellow writer in Hamilton and this is a good place to read quietly. I will write this post and head back because there is a book by a fellow Canadian writer, Bianca Lakoseljac, that I started last week and have not found the time until today and thus I would like to finish reading it.
When I was on the Odyssey a few days ago, the interesting kayaker with the fascinating lights was telling me about a company called Nokero (short for No Kerosene) who make lights for communities that have no access to electricity. It is a simple but important concept. Make a solar light bulb that is bright enough to be a viable light so that people will not have to use kerosene to see. I am guessing that they could hang right in the window because the bottom is hinged so they are pretty darn practical for use in a Tiny House or off grid setting. Cool eh?
The business model is really interesting and I hope successful.
I wonder if any off grid/or steady camping folks have tried these? I just bought a large solar panel so this is not something that I believe that I need, but even so, I like the look of these folks and their product. I would love to hear from anyone who has seen or used one of them.
While sitting in my favourite cafe in Kingston (Mug and Truffle), when this brilliant old song came on the stereo. This time, I was working on a blog post and I heard the lyrics again, in a different way, for the first time.
“two hours of pushing broom
Buys a eight by twelve four bit room
I’m a man of means by no means
King of the road”
THO is similar in size at ~8.5×11.5. Of course, I don’t rent it, but own it… and my process is not one of necessity but choice… too unlike many Tiny Housers, I did not build mine to go on the road but I attached it to a foundation. Even though there are clear differences, these lyrics made me think.
Last night, I had a wonderful chat with my almost cousin Jenny who is in the military. She shared a story about winter camping with a deflating mattress. It was no ride in the park! She woke up with her bottom side frozen into the ground. She spoke about lighting a small naphtha stove, with thick mittened fingers, while she was on watch. She explained to me how an act as seemingly trivial as this become the matter of significant importance and how this outweighed whatever was going on in the world around her. This along with other experiences she has lived make her full well understand that we humans can deal with loss of convenience quite easily. We simply get on with the smallest details of survival, we adapt. I am not supposing that my life at THO mirrors the hardship that soldiers face. As a matter of fact, a while back a friend said that THO was practically palatial when compared to his hunting camp. I have to say, as a person who has travelled and seen some pretty seedy hotels, I also realize that it is this too when compared to a two-bit room.
Still, THO does not have a lot in the way of amenities. This required me to make many adaptations in the way that I live my life. As this house of mine comes closer to completion, I hope that I have what it takes to make the steps to permanently adapt to this “less is more” life.
The great Townes Van Zandt wrote an ode to Janis Joplin and in this he said:
“If I thought about it long enough
I just might make some kind of move
watchful eyes are too hard on the soul”
To tell you the truth, I can’t explain how all this music and these thoughts are connected except inside me, somewhere deep and buried in my own personal set of meanings. They are part of the process of downsizing and giving up on the extras that at one time I felt were needed in order for me to be happy. Now, I think happiness is not a big pile of stuff, but rather it is something internal, gained by having experiences which make my life full.
Tiny House Ontario 