There are times when everything happens at once. You feel like you are always about to start or do something. You’ll “just quickly” do this and that before. At the end of the day, you haven’t started. But somehow, it all gets done in the end.

I’d put of dealing with the basement for months. When our neighbors gifted me some shelves, I’d stuffed them in and closed the door. Now, it’s time to sort this. To build the new shelves, I had to take almost everything out of the basement.

I’ve been doing a whole lot of carrying things lately.

There are seemingly endless amounts of trash on the abandoned land I adopted. Getting it off my land has not always been easy, as I usually work alone. The trash from inside the hut and the moldy mattresses were first to go. No need to keep a health hazard around. The trash has already been repiled three times. So much trash.

On rainy days, the basement was the perfect distraction.

But working piece-meal meant a lot of back and forth. I’m still far from done. The neighbors accidentally packed some of the bolts, so I can’t put up all the shelves. But at least, I can walk into my basement again, and get to my pantry.

Weeks later than in my mom’s garden further south, my tomatoes were finally ripening. I grew two types of tomatoes this year. This is a determinate variety which means it won’t keep growing and producing. The tomatoes are all ripe around the same time. Then the plant is done.

As the carrot greens were dying back, I decided to harvest my (still baby) carrots. Small, super sweet, delicious carrots are better than no carrots at all. The volunteer zucchini (thanks, birds) was in really bad shape. Too much rain for the little friends. So, I harvested the blossoms and dug them out. The wet, gray weather has been relentless, so I’ve been harvesting early. The tomato doesn’t care if it finishes ripening inside.

I’ve been slowly planning what the land is supposed to look like. I’m excited! The roof has been my priority but there have been plenty of small projects. Many of them took longer than planned.

The rusty old door put up a real fight. How long can it take to replace a lock? Well, weeks apparently. Everything was rusted shut, so I had to cut out the old mechanism. And in the end, I won’t even use this to lock the door… This was just about getting the door to close (and stay closed…).

I’m rebuilding the rest of the door from wood scraps, so I guess my hut will have, um, character?! And I need to get an actual lock, so I don’t have to carry things back home all the time. But the door closes. So, at least, I don’t need to wedge a chair against it anymore.

In August, everything happened at once. I could barely keep track.

I canned 7 kilos of potatoes, turned four more into gnocchi, dug up the old rotting terrace (and found a layer of wooden palletes underneath…),

built a temporary flat surface for the work bench, and carried a lot more things around. I even started my first two garden beds. But those will be stories for other days.

So long, and thanks for being here.