Going carless.

It's been a week since my surgery and I am glad to say I am doing just fine. I still have another week until I get to take off all my dressings and bandages, but I'm getting by all right.

Honestly, there isn't much news on the garden front. Everything has sprouted so far except the peas. So we have radishes, kale, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, onions, scallions and lettuce. I thinned the broccoli sprouts and we ate the ones I pulled. They actually tasted like broccoli! Even with just their one unidentifiable leaf.

I do, however, have updates on the homesteading front. I sold my car. It is still in my possesion for a couple weeks, but it's not my car anymore. I think most people would probably be stressed out and worried about living without a car, but I am really, really excited. I walked to the bank yesterday. It was so nice. I really love walking places and I am thrilled that I am going to be required to do a lot more walking soon. It's the way people have gotten around for thousands upon thousands of years. These car things have only been around the last hundred and frankly, I don't like them. They are stressful. I have to admit when I was riding my bike everywhere last year, the one time a week I might actually get into my car and drive it felt like a real luxury. The idea of not working my muscles to get to the store seemed so novel and I felt pretty fancy.

But, thats just it. Americans walk only a few thousand feet per day on average. We are disconnected from the activities that make us human. This is the reason I am so interested in gardening and cooking and baking and getting places under my own power. It's a reconnection to being a human animal. Without it there is so much missed in the human experience. Two of my friends are taking this to the higher level and are embarking on a walking adventure. They are going to leave Portland and walk to St. Louis, retracing the steps of Lewis and Clark. I'm sure they will learn a lot about history, development of civilization and themselves.

I remember as a kid at a sleepover at my friend's house when we walked up to the Circle K on the corner and we bought candy and sodas for the night ahead. I still remember how awesome I thought it was that we just walked there. I remember the joy of walking and talking with friends, enjoying the summer sun in the afternoon and getting somewhere autonomously. The house I grew up in, though the city has gotten closer to it now, was a 20 minute drive from anything when I was young. I didn't have the opportunity to ride a bike to the movies or walk up to the store. Don't get me wrong, I loved growing up on some land, with space to play and imagine and not be held in by the confines of suburbia. But, I still remember the joy that a walk to the local market gave me.

There is a movement that seems to be happening in my generation. Living in a progressive city I think it is magnified here. People are giving up their cars, growing Victory Gardens, learning to sew and knit and make things with their own two hands. It's a rebellion against the twinkie and cable TV lifestyle so many of us grew up with. Sometimes I think it's almost a third-wave feminism. It's the pendulum settling somewhere in the middle where women have equal rights and opportunities but they can still bake a loaf of bread or mend a pair of pants and don't have to feel bad about it. It's what women have been doing for centuries, and there is something very comforting in making the same motions with your hands to cook, bake or mend that your great-great-great grandmother also made. One of the other blogs I follow turned me onto this book, Radical Homemakers, which I really want to read. It looks like an articulation of what I am thinking.

Anyway. Here's a picture of my plum tree. Isn't it pretty? I'm so happy that every year in early March I'll have a big puff of white flower in my backyard.

Also, Mike and I took Lemon to Kelly Point Park last weekend and she played in the water and it was really cute. See?