DIY Fairy Tales

The golden wagon shows its aging face, weathered by the many winter storms wet and windy washing away the beeswax and milk paint that covers her slats of White Oak panels. When the season of mowing began in April I covered the south-facing windows to shield and seal against the cut grass and pollens that tamper with me.

An impulse tickled at me: Let in a little light, add a dose of magic and humor. I sliced frames into the sheets of aluminum covered paper and dangled a favorite card in the small window. A Mobile Home ... a dear mole pulls a curved shell on wheels. The similarity suits us. And, I love the reflection of the Tall Ones in the shiny-ness of the Denny Foil.

 Acres of grass fields is a funny place for someone with allergies and hay fever to park her home?

Isn't it though.

Still, the options for a a wandering pair like ourselves are pebble-size so we make the most of the choices and stir the pot of possibilities. You may or may not understand just what that means. But, let me say the magic of finding safety and root in that inner sense of self-worth takes a whole lot of imagination...and cooperation from the many seen and unseen.  If we were not living in this field on the prairie some might define us homeless.

"This too can be a special place, fostering a sense of self-worth, self-reliance, and responsibility, where respect and civility are cherished values." - "The Honolulu Homeless Project That Could Have Only Worked in Hawaii" by Duane Kurisu

The discerning reader will feel the pulse of a duality, or plurality, of stories as I post the pictures and the narrative of what happens when making hay, for someone with hay fever, takes on the glow of fun to create solutions.

There! See that Rex of a Guardian clinging to the boulders in front of a seemingly innocent vase of flowers? Good, that can only mean you are able and willing to see the necessary in between world that turns hay fever into gold.

Remember that old tale of Rumpelstiltskin? "Spin that straw into gold" and some promise of a happy ending gave us readers the hope in an improbable impossible outcome. Well, here is a hill of Thistles, not straw. A hill of Thistles pulled by hand over a couple days during the real and truly finished week lived here on the Prairie Front.

This hill of Thistles was rumbled down the road and up the hill to a herd of Big Sheep who ... unbelievable as it sounds to those who know such things about Sheep, love thistles. Pete drove his truck Bernadette to the the hungry Thistle-Eaters and not without many punctuates to his paws. Luckily he has a Dumpling of a woman who plucked her safety pin off her shirt and freed those infectious thorns from thumb and finger.

Thistle pulling was part of the necessary steps involved prior to calling on the big Petroleum eating machinery to cut down the tall grasses on the near or more than twenty acres that surround the Small Golden Wagon.  Whoa ... what to do and why do it?

"Is it the pollens?" the Mower Man asked.

"Yes, and more," answered the Dumpling woman.

The field of freshly mowed grasses could have flipped a switch of frenzy, but instead we packed up the trusty and intrepid Subaru named 'Scout' for a Road Trip of fun away from the making of hay. Where did we go for this?

 To one of our favorite beaches that faces west where the Salish Sea blows pollen-free and the beach filled with stones, pebbles and patterns of Earth made a bed of such magnificence.

Yes. That's the beach where pebbles, rocks, and stones stretch as far as you can see. And when it's a place that you need millions and billions of Tiny Points to touch you every where you can't get to alone? This place can do the math, do the medicine, make the magic clear the congestion and turn the tables on dispair.

While the Mower Man made hay I found on a bed of stones like the Border Witch who found herself with a Silver-haired Raven.

Cut grass in a field needs to 'cure' if it's not raked. Twenty acres of field is more than our man Pete could manage. The afternoon away was not quite enough to restore our selves and souls so we gratefully accepted an invitation to head for Samish Island. Where friends awaited us ... See what we did on Saturday. All Saturday.

Our friend Linda Good and Pete parked on a bench on the beach.

Linda and Pete and Len Good with a bag filled with his 'magic striking stones.' Hopefully, Len will read this post and the real story behind those sparkling stones will get to this blog to add some science to the magic of a meandering tale.

These friends are, among other talents, storytellers and musicians. Check it.

We had a grand little time playing my one four-chord mele 'White Sandy Beaches, Gentle Breezes.'

And then Linda and Len joined in.

And then ... Linda left the picnic table to sing to the neighbors.

The mountains north and east include Kulshan or Mt. Baker tucked under the clouds.

Where as we sat a rainbow grew slowly and steadily before the sun began it's sinking exit in the West.

Though we hoped it might be possible to spend an overnight in the seaside cabin, or stretch ourselves into the back of the Subaru as we have in years past, neither choice was doable. Instead, we bid our lovely friends 'Aloha and much mahalo,' handed off two bunches of Bok Choy and headed back to the Golden Wagon on the prairie.

It was a long and taxing drive for the old dears challenged by the late hour and the MANY many other cars with blazing head lights and impatient drivers on the road, but, with luck and the blessings of Red Hibiscus offered to the journey and the Ancestors we made it safely back at midnight. With gratitude and tiredness we shuffled our clean clothes from the bed into the back of the car, trading places with the quilts climbed onto the futon with that dangling card at our heads and tucked ourselves into a deep sweet sleep.

Ahhh ... the gold of a good sleep is something the birds know intimately. They wake with morning birdsong that can only mean: "Oh yes, thank you we get another day on this magnificent planet!"

The smell of cut fields was still large. Our traveling adventure was only half way through, and the juggling of pieces in this Rumpelstiltskin were still in play. It was a Sunday morning. A Sunday Farmers' Market would take place within a few hours. Like Elves in another one of those old tales Pete moved tables and benches from one place to another on yet another stretch of freshly-cut lawn to help with the setting up for the market to come.

The arrangement we have here on this place called Tilth involves a weekly rearrangement of our living spaces. A cubby where we hang our clothes or dry them after we wash them while also giving us a privy of convenience converts to a public restroom for vendors and visitors on the weekend. A kitchen used for making meals and sitting somewhere other than inside the Golden Wagon transforms into the Laughing Cat Cafe.

The Long and Tall Elf is most responsible for all this 'straw into gold' Rumplelstilskin-ness. He did his magic and we packed ourselves up for a ferry ride and headed south.
To EASY STREET ...

The joint was hoppin' and every body was talkin' there on Easy Street. We signed in for a table for 2, took a few laps (the West Seattle Farmers' Market was in full swing) while we waited. The cellphone rang and it was our son CKB calling from Pu'uPohakuloa He'ia on Hawaii Moku. He was about to take a walk under the Pele-red sky. We talked, me on the busy sidewalks of urban West Seattle and he on an island where Tutu was making new land.

We never did get that table for 2 but DID instead find two stools at the end of the bar where the record store and city diner that inspired yet another fairy tale fed us pan cakes, crispy bacon, two eggs over easy (they call this the Dolly Parton) with real maple syrup. I wanted blueberries too, but our waiter explained, "So sorry, we stop adding blueberries at 11." No worries, the Dolly filled me good and plenty. And the L & T Elf had big breakfast sort of bean-eggs and salsa-ish burrito dish with cups of good buzz coffee. 

With bellies filled and our souls satisfied with conversations and content for stories yet to come, we walked a few more laps through the West Seattle Farmers' Market, chatted with one of the vendors we know from our Whidbey Whirl of farmers at markets and continued with our DIY fairy tale.

 The International District and Uwajimaya was swarming. We wound our way into the Pioneer Square District where excited fans were heading to a Father's Day Mariner's baseball game,

then stepped into the cool air-conditioner land of Asian consumer heaven of Uwajimaya  for a bag of frozen Haleiwa Brand poi, Daifuku Red Bean Cakes (mochi) with black and brown sesame seeds, Mung Bean threads (long rice), a packet of smoked wild Coho salmon and a small handful of new cards to mail to lucky friends and family.

We arrived back on the prairie with our tale mostly told sometime near five Sunday afternoon. The lit message in our Subaru tells us to "Check Your Engine." With all our wanderings, it's time for some maintenance of our trusty 'Scout.' The hay is curing nicely, still fragrant though less inciting, time does flow and a Monday morning is well on her way. 

Our man the Tall and Lean elf is a collector of mementos. If you are lucky enough to see the stash of tiny treasures that fill his compact boxes of precious memories you would be surprised and delighted at what counts for gold in his world. Lucky me.

And among his treasures: cartoons. This is one of his favorites.

Life is one crazy kind of adventure. Fairy tale or personal nightmare? The trick or the trickster is out there with the flip of a card in the last, or the next game of solitaire. Stories do hold us together or chop us up into disconnected versions of helplessness. If there is choice, and free will always an option the DIY version I love is the one that mixes things up well and good. Like this one lived all over the Salish World.

A little bit of planning, a lot of looking out for the clues to magic alive and well and respect for the abundance with lots of saying, "Thanks!"

How's your fairy tale shapin' up?